By Matt McCullough, TGC.
Most of us deal with death by choosing to ignore it. “Being unable to cure death,” Blaise Pascal once wrote, “we’ve decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”
In Pascal’s 17th-century Parisian context, death-avoidance was a rich man’s game. Gamble more, hunt more foxes, plan another ball. He could hardly have imagined the mainstream opportunities for distraction we now take for granted. No humans have ever had more options “not to think about such things.”
But for precisely that reason, another recent trend is all the more striking. A rising tide of influencers is challenging the premise beneath Pascal’s complaint—the notion that death is incurable in the first place. Far from avoiding the subject, they’re confronting the problem head-on.
Extreme longevity is having a moment. Peter Attia’s Outlive has sold more than 3 million copies in three years. Bryan Johnson, founder of the Don’t Die movement, was the subject of a popular 2025 Netflix documentary. And last summer, The New Yorker ran an in-depth profile of Peter Diamandis and the rise of specialized longevity clinics like his own Fountain Life—one of thousands of similar clinics worldwide, up from fewer than a hundred barely 10 years ago.
What should we think about this trend? And what opportunities does it open for Christian witness?
It’s deeply human to long for more life, and it’s certainly wise to take care of the bodies God has given us for as long as we can. But there’s a deeper conviction beneath this trend that we have to recognize and confront. Longevity influencers believe we’re our own best shot at dealing with the problem. They’ve vastly underestimated both the problem of death and the hope of the gospel.
Who Are the Longevity Influencers?
Longevity influencers make up a diverse and quirky crowd. On one end you have Johnson, arguably the most well-known and provocative of the bunch. His obsession is reverse-aging, on which he reportedly spends a quarter-million dollars per year.