The Moderate Case

I understand why you’d say this if you don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. From a Jewish perspective, God is one, transcendent, and not embodied. So the idea of God becoming man and dying sounds wrong. But the Christian claim is not that God became less than God or was reduced. It is that God chose to enter His creation without losing His divine nature. That is not a contradiction. It is a claim about God’s ability to act within the world He made. Calling Jesus a charlatan also does not really hold up when you look at His life. Charlatans seek power, money, or self-preservation. Jesus gained none of those. He challenged authority, refused to build a political movement, and was executed. His followers did not gain wealth or status either. Many of them were killed for what they believed. You can reject His claims, but reducing Him to a con man does not fit the historical reality. The idea that “the Jews saw through Him early” is also too simplistic. The first followers of Jesus were Jews. The early church was entirely Jewish at the beginning. What actually happened is that first century Jews were divided. Some believed He fulfilled the Scriptures. Others believed He did not. That debate has continued ever since. It was not a unanimous rejection. On the theological point, Christianity does not teach that God ceased to be God or that the divine nature died. It teaches that the Son took on a human nature and truly experienced death in that humanity. The divine nature remains eternal. So the objection that “God cannot die” is aimed at a version of Christianity that Christians themselves do not believe. The deeper disagreement is about what the Messiah is supposed to do. If you expect only a conquering king, then a crucified Messiah looks like failure. Christianity claims the Messiah came first to deal with sin and death and will come again in power. You can disagree with that, but it is a coherent claim, not nonsense.

@AyaTollah48414 He left Catholicism.

@TheModerateCase He was quoting Will Durant, a Catholic.

I think a lot of people are reacting to the wording without really sitting with what was actually being said. This was not a theological statement about Jesus. It was a comment about how power works in the real world. You can fully believe Christ is King and still recognize that throughout history, moral truth by itself has not stopped violent people from acting. From a Christian perspective, I understand why it sounds off. Jesus is not just another historical figure. The entire foundation of Christianity is that what looked like defeat on the cross was actually victory. So when someone frames things in terms of power and armies, it can feel like it’s missing the whole point. That reaction makes sense. At the same time, Scripture does not ignore reality. Governments are described as having authority to use force to restrain evil. David was righteous and still fought wars. Nehemiah rebuilt while holding a weapon. There has always been a tension between spiritual truth and the realities of living in a broken world. That is where people are talking past each other. One side is thinking about ultimate truth and eternal authority. The other is talking about what happens on the ground when real threats exist. Those are not the same category. You can believe Christ has ultimate authority over all things and still recognize that not everyone submits to that authority, and that has consequences. I also think the reaction calling this “antichrist” is more emotional than thoughtful. You can disagree with how it was phrased and still understand the context. It was a statement about survival and power, not a denial of who Christ is. At the end of the day, Christianity has always held both realities at once. The cross settles the question of who ultimately wins. But until that final victory is fully realized, the world still operates with danger, conflict, and the need to protect the innocent. Ignoring that does not make someone more faithful. It just disconnects them from reality.

@RQA Durant left Catholicism before he said this.

@TheModerateCase He's quoting a Catholic historian.

Will Durant left Christianity and was not religious when he said this many years ago, so your point doesn’t make sense. The quote is still based in realism and can be biblically supported, but it’s not like this quote was attributed to some great Christian thinker. He wasn’t at the time.

@TheModerateCase @MaxNordau He is quoting a catholic philosopher, and people are crying about it

@megynkelly @Average_NY_Guy Well I guess you’re extremely inappropriate, Megyn.

@Average_NY_Guy You don’t put another country’s flag on the USA flag, ever. We don’t share it. We treat the flag as inviolate. It’s extremely inappropriate.

Holy shit is this real?

Yes, Christ is King. “If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24) “The Scriptures… bear witness about me” (John 5:39) “If you believed Moses, you would believe me” (John 5:46) Jesus is the Messiah. In the context of Jews today, Jesus’ message then and now wouldn’t be hate or distance. It would be the same as it’s always been: “I am the fulfillment of what you’re searching for. Come to me.” Jesus spoke truth clearly, but with grief, patience, and love even toward those who rejected Him.

I think a lot of people are reacting to the wording without really sitting with what was actually being said. This was not a theological statement about Jesus. It was a comment about how power works in the real world. You can fully believe Christ is King and still recognize that throughout history, moral truth by itself has not stopped violent people from acting. From a Christian perspective, I understand why it sounds off. Jesus is not just another historical figure. The entire foundation of Christianity is that what looked like defeat on the cross was actually victory. So when someone frames things in terms of power and armies, it can feel like it’s missing the whole point. That reaction makes sense. At the same time, Scripture does not ignore reality. Governments are described as having authority to use force to restrain evil. David was righteous and still fought wars. Nehemiah rebuilt while holding a weapon. There has always been a tension between spiritual truth and the realities of living in a broken world. That is where people are talking past each other. One side is thinking about ultimate truth and eternal authority. The other is talking about what happens on the ground when real threats exist. Those are not the same category. You can believe Christ has ultimate authority over all things and still recognize that not everyone submits to that authority, and that has consequences. I also think the reaction calling this “antichrist” is more emotional than thoughtful. You can disagree with how it was phrased and still understand the context. It was a statement about survival and power, not a denial of who Christ is. At the end of the day, Christianity has always held both realities at once. The cross settles the question of who ultimately wins. But until that final victory is fully realized, the world still operates with danger, conflict, and the need to protect the innocent. Ignoring that does not make someone more faithful. It just disconnects them from reality.

NOW - Netanyahu: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."

Hahah, okay. This you, Megyn?

Striking Iran now was strategically the right move.

This is why I can't take Megyn Kelly as serious as I used to.

Thank you! @dbongino

I advocate Israel’s right to exist and defend itself and speak out against warped narratives. I don’t speak on Israel’s domestic issues. I don’t vote in Israel and I’m not Israeli. I also don’t speak on Ukraine’s domestic issues. Do you see how this works?

If you’re not an American, you should stay out of the domestic discourse. Your opinion is largely irrelevant and does more harm than good.

I cannot confirm that whoever replaces the IRGC, if it completely falls, will be worse or better. I agree America has always been good at the shock and awe, but the nation building phase doesn’t work. But Trump has said this is not that, so we will see. I think strategically doing this, at a time where Iran was building its nuclear program, which they’ve now admitted to, was the right choice. The uranium enrichment was far beyond the threshold for civilian use, they were lying to and hiding things from the IAEA, and continuing to fund terror proxies, one that launched an invasion into Israel and began a war that has completely taken over on social media and had massive ripple effects in America. The JCPOA did nothing to stop their ballistic missile production, which sources indicate would have doubled or more in the coming years, that they would’ve surely used to protect themselves (more missiles than NATO could defend with its systems) in the case that someone did take action to stop them from going nuclear. Not to mention China, oil, and many other things. These short choppy tweets feel and sound good on social media, but they just aren’t serious or realist.

@TheModerateCase @piersmorgan Dude - we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and replaced the Taliban with the Taliban. The USA has *never* been in control of the Middle East. Its time to leave.

Trump is losing control of this war.

Bush and Obama blew up parties, wedding ceremonies, and processions in the Middle East like 5 times. There are also many other instances where mistakes were made where civilians were struck — they were accidents. No one ever argued that America had lost control because of a horrible accident. If you think Trump’s dodging of responsibility and his statements were wrong, which I do, say that — but don’t sit here and act like this event means America isn’t in control — or that similar accidents in history have been viewed in the same way.

Bush and Obama blew up parties, wedding ceremonies, and processions in the Middle East like 5 times. There are also many other instances where mistakes were made where civilians were struck — they were accidents. No one ever argued that America had lost control because of a horrible accident. If you think Trump’s dodging of responsibility and his statements were wrong, which I do, say that — but don’t sit here and act like this event means America isn’t in control — or that similar accidents in history have been viewed in the same way.

@piersmorgan He never had control. He blew up a school full of kids *in the first hour*.

So when Israel does something we approve of, they control America. But when Israel does something we disapprove of, America is losing control. Seems it’s not that you really believe Israel controls America, but that America should wholly control Israel’s every move.

@piersmorgan So when Israel does something we approve of, they control America. But when Israel does something we disapprove of, America is losing control. Seems it’s not that you really believe Israel controls America, but that America should wholly control Israel’s every move.

One of the worst parts about social media and the political space is that it actively makes people dumber and collapses all of the nuances and complexities of situations into slogans that are just repeated into oblivion, conditioning us to essentially rely on scripts instead of evaluating things as deeply as we should. I can attest to this, I admittedly feel stupider now than I did a year ago, before being more active on social media. It is mentally exhausting and draining. What should be used for quick access to information and free speech sharing has turned into cesspools of idiotic robots who are becoming more radicalized in each direction every day, more now than ever.