In your new book, “Faith: A Journey for All,” you write that despite believing you had only weeks to live following a cancer diagnosis in 2015, you had no fear of dying. Do you believe in an afterlife? Yes. I’m perfectly willing to leave it up to God. I didn’t have anything to do with when I was born or who my parents were, and I trust God also with the question about afterlife.

What do you think it might be like? I have no idea, but the Bible compares our rebirth to an acorn becoming a tree and a seed becoming a flower. So, a transformation of some kind.

One ultimate test of faith in the Bible is when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Have you ever thought about what you’d do if God told you to sacrifice your own son? I don’t know if my faith is that strong or not. I know I am much more fallible than Abraham.

You write that American drone strikes in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen often result in high civilian casualties, which “contradicts our claim to be a peaceful nation devoted to human rights.” Do you think America is committing war crimes? I think sometimes we have bordered on committing war crimes. I don’t think that we adhere to a just approach to war, where we are supposed to make armed conflict a last resort and limit our damage to other people to a minimum. I think our country is known around the world as perhaps the most warlike major country there is. China hasn’t been at war with anybody since 1979.