Image Courtesy of Derek Penwell
Heretic Adjacent | Aapril 7, 2026
There are some words that don’t merely communicate. Some pierce our carefully cultivated insulation. They bypass the mind and land in the gut, sending the nervous system into a “Where-are-the-exits?” panic.
Public language like this is meant to do exactly what it did to so many of us: It’s supposed to overwhelm us, to make our bodies swim in cortisol and adrenaline, to make cruelty feel normal and disaster feel inevitable. The nausea, the exhaustion, and the heavy dread are components of our internal compass, pointing away from disaster.
But we shouldn’t be embarrassed by our shaking hands. They’re proof that we’re still conscious in a world trying to lull us into a coma.
A threat this morally vacant should still shock us. The fact that it does shock us shouldn’t be read as a sign of fragility, but as a sign that some indispensable part of us is still conscious enough to recognize evil when it smacks us in the face.
Because the body knows. Even before we have the words, the body’s already clocked the danger. For some people, it feels like nausea. For others, it feels like anger, or exhaustion, or that familiar dread that drops into your belly when the folks with all the power start talking as though entire peoples are disposable.
It may sound counterintuitive, but we ought not feel embarrassed by our response to something as potentially heinous as this. Our bodies are telling the truth here. They can’t ignore the fact that this isn’t normal political speech.
This isn’t normal, nor is it morally or theologically supportable. It’s the language of domination, and the body, thank God, still knows the difference.
But beneath the panic, there’s something deeper and sadder: grief. Grief that our common life has been so thoroughly degraded that talking about annihilating a civilization represents “leadership.”
Grief that millions of people have grown accustomed to the vocabulary of menace, and that human beings made in the image of God can be spoken of as though they’re nothing but obstacles or collateral damage in somebody else’s video game fantasy. Clearly, some of what we’re feeling is fear.
But fear isn’t the same thing as surrender. Fear is real information. It’s the body clearing its throat to signal that we need to “pay attention because something’s terribly off.”
But surrender is something else entirely. Surrender is when we let our terror imagine the future for us, since we start to believe that, because something is terrifying, it must also be unstoppable. But pay attention: That’s precisely the lie authoritarian speech is designed to inject into our central nervous system.
The people responsible for this peril count on our fear. But even more than that, they count on our resignation to paralyze us and keep us unwilling or unable to organize or resist.
So, courage in a moment like this requires much of us. Bravery and bravado aren’t the same thing. In a moment like this, courage begins with retaining our humanity, with being able to imagine the pain we’re likely to cause to innocent Iranians, not to mention our own souls.
Courage requires us to take a breath big enough to speak honestly about the unimaginability of the whole sordid mess. It requires the one thing authoritarian spectacle is designed to destroy: the ability to stay present to the pain of others when our own fear is screaming in our heads.
And it requires all of us.
We borrow calm from one another and look to each other for language when we can’t find the words in the midst of the storm. We remind each other that cruelty isn’t the same thing as strength, even when a cracked whisper is all we can manage.
I honestly don’t know what comes next. But I know this: Our future won’t be secured with our anxiety, no matter how intensely it rages. The only way we protect a future that doesn’t include annihilating anyone the powerful believe expendable is by keeping our hearts open, our hands steady, and our bodies present enough to recognize another human being when the people in power insist there’s no one there.
May we be those people. May we have breath and courage sufficient to the task. May we speak the truth out loud, though our voices tremble. And may we refuse to hand over our souls to anyone who needs our terror but cares nothing about our consent.
Tony Dixon
The Rev. Derek Penwell
The Rev. Derek Penwell is Senior Minister at Douglass Blvd Christian Churchin Louisville, Kentucky. This is a free post from his Substack blog, Heretic Adjacent. Click here to read the rest of his Substack .