Lionel Messi is the exact reason you should live solely on your own terms.
The man speaks ill of no one. He disrespects neither teammates nor rivals. He is the best to ever do his craft. Yet he has dedicated haters. If ever a man (let alone a player) should have had no haters, it is Messi. Still, on account of nothing but his matchless success, he commands a horde of them.
Do what thou wilt. People will talk regardless.
A life lived minding what people will say is a wasted life.
The cross is part of the mission. The imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within; the violence that until now has been the law is unmasked. The poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death, yet in so doing He brings a new creation to light. #HolyThursday
benjamin netanyahu, an ICC fugitive for war crimes, said: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."
My answer:
Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan? That claim only works if you reduce reality to brute force and call that "victory."
Jesus and Genghis Khan were not playing the same game. One built an empire on fear. The other refused power, refused violence, and accepted death. If you think the same standard can measure them, you've already misunderstood both.
Genghis Khan conquered through terror. His power was undeniable, but it was also short-lived. His empire fractured, as all empires built on violence eventually do.
Jesus Christ had no army, no territory, no political office. He was executed publicly, humiliated, and abandoned. By every metric of raw power, He lost.
And yet here is the problem with your argument:
Two thousand years later, no one orders their life around Genghis Khan—but billions still do around Christ. So what exactly is "advantage"?
If you mean the ability to dominate, to coerce, to destroy—then yes, evil can win for a time. Christianity has never denied that. The Cross itself is proof that evil can appear to triumph.
But Christianity makes a far more radical claim: That truth, once revealed, cannot be killed.
Power can force submission. It cannot produce truth. Violence can silence voices. It cannot erase what is just.
Evil wins moments. It wins battles. Sometimes it even wins generations. But it does not endure.
The resurrection is not just a theological claim—it is a statement about reality itself: that what is grounded in truth and love outlasts what is built on fear and domination.
So no—Jesus does not compete with Genghis Khan. He exposes the limits of everything Genghis Khan represents.
We want the warhorse.
Jesus rides a donkey.
We want the eagle.
The Holy Spirit descends as a dove.
We want to take up swords.
Jesus takes up a cross.
We want the roaring lion.
God comes as a slaughtered lamb.
We keep trying to arm God.
God keeps trying to disarm us.
Lebanon (all of Lebanon) is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Its people. history, and culture is deeply rooted in the land.
Israel is 77 year old European settler-colony that seeks to bomb and destroy all that it will never be.
Reports from #Iran and across the entire #MiddleEast continue to cause deep dismay and raise the fear that the conflict will expand, and that other countries in the region, including dear Lebanon, may once again sink into instability. Let us #PrayTogether for the roar of bombs to cease, weapons to fall silent, and space to open for dialogue, in which people's voices may be heard.
In order to not care about the Epstein story, you have to fundamentally not care about the idea of democracy. The Epstein story is a window into the way a small group of people who nobody elected make unaccountable decisions to enrich and to pleasure themselves at the expense of the public and at the expense of particular direct victims, some of them children, who are left with no recourse. This is the public's chance to see some of these people at work. Shame may be the only accountability we get.
To not care about that means you're basically okay with a world run by an unaccountable elite.
🇮🇱 NETANYAHU TELLS CHRISTIANS "ISRAEL'S THE ONLY SAFE PLACE IN MIDDLE EAST" - LEBANESE CHRISTIANS WHO'VE BEEN THERE 2,000 YEARS CALL BULLSHIT
Netanyahu's Christmas message to the world: Israel is the only place in the Middle East where Christians can live in peace.
One problem. Lebanon exists.
Lebanon - where the president must be a Maronite Christian by constitutional law. Where Christians have held political power continuously since independence. Where churches predate Islam by 400 years. Where Christian communities have survived empires, crusades, and civil wars for 2 millennia.
But sure, the only safe place is Israel.
This isn't a message for Middle Eastern Christians. It's a message for American evangelicals who don't know Lebanon exists and think "Middle East" means one undifferentiated war zone where only Israel protects minorities.
Here's what makes it particularly insulting: Palestinian Christians - the ones who actually live under Israeli governance in the West Bank - are watching their communities shrink, their churches surveilled, and their land carved up by settlements. Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, is walled off behind checkpoints.
But Netanyahu's selling Western Christians the story that Israel's their protector.
Meanwhile actual Lebanese Christians - who've maintained unbroken communities since the time of the Apostles - get erased from the narrative entirely.
Their existence is inconvenient to the propaganda.
The message isn't about protecting Christians. It's about recruiting American evangelical political support by weaponizing their concern for Middle Eastern Christians while ignoring what those Christians actually say.
You know who didn't ask for Netanyahu's Christmas message? Middle Eastern Christians. They're too busy living in the region Netanyahu claims they can't survive in.
Source: Netanyahu Christmas address, @IsraeliPM
https://t.co/psaJnH3MOc
We must unite our efforts so that #Lebanon can return to its former glory. Disarming our hearts is the only way to do this. Let us cast off the armor of our ethnic and political divisions, open our religious confessions to mutual encounter, and reawaken in our hearts the dream of a united Lebanon, where peace and justice reign, where all recognize each other as brothers and sisters. #ApostolicJourney