After referencing what the late pastor Dr. Tim Keller learned spiritually from his own experience with pancreatic cancer, Sasse said, “I, now in the midst of this disease, know much more the truth of my finitude than I ever let myself believe in the past…I can’t keep the planets in orbit. I can’t even grow skin on my face.”
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Douthat then asked Sasse, “For the listener or viewer who…doesn’t believe in God, right, and finds your cosmic optimism admirable but maybe he thinks that you’re deluding yourself on the brink of actual finitude, what would you say to that person?”
“Now, this is the part that I want to talk about in relationship to our theme, believe it or not,” Piper said. “And before I read his answer, think of Jesus. [Sasse] is not Jesus, and that’s not the point.”
“Think of Jesus here, surrounded by scribes and Pharisees, who have read the books of Moses and the prophets all their lives and who hear you, Jesus, talking about existing before Abraham,” said Piper, “talking about dying, talking about rising again, talking about eternal life. And these Pharisees and scribes can’t believe you. They think you’re deluded. What, Jesus, would you say to them? Jesus, what would you say?”
“That’s where we’re going in John 5 in just a minute,” Piper explained. “And I want you to compare Sasse and Jesus. Here’s what Sasse said.”
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“He said, ‘Let’s read the Book of Romans together,’” said Piper. “I laughed out loud…who would say such a thing? What a great line. Let’s read the book of Romans together.”
Sasse went on to say that in Romans 1, Paul says that “there are lots of intellectual arguments you can make against God, but you kinda have to start with the fundamental question about, what do you do with this moral issue of our own conscience?”
“And does the individual in your hypothetical really start with the claim that things are right in his soul?” Sasse asked Douthat. “Because I can’t relate to that. Things are not right in my soul. My soul thinks Ben should be God. And I want that to die. Cancer sucks, but I’m pretty grateful that cancer is a stake against my delusional self-idolatry.”
