Lord, Surely Not That Guy

Commentary

by

Perspectives

Heretic Adjacent | May 28, 2026

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see a picture of the president or hear his voice, I get a feeling in my gut like the last time I failed to learn my lesson, involving a gas station burrito and roiling waves of regret.

Or when I hear people who taught me the faith say something breathtakingly awful in defense of this administration, I feel my soul start reaching for a WWE folding chair. So, I’m not going to pretend I’ve got this figured out.

There are people in my life, people with seminary degrees, people who’ve preached the Sermon on the Mount, people who taught me that Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world... who are looking the other way right now as those little children Jesus loves are bombed, starved, separated, or deported. Some of those folks are actively cheerleading what’s happening. Others of them just won’t say anything, which at this point pretty much amounts to the same thing.

I’m bitter about it. I don’t know how else to say it.

I wish I could duck down behind the excuse that it’s the clean, righteous kind of anger I’ve got rattling around inside. You know, the kind that convicts you to protest and organize.

I wish my anger were the noble-minded variety. But, alas, it’s not. I’m harboring the other kind of anger. The kind that suppurates and poisons your heart.

I’m not proud of it, but I sometimes catch myself hoping people I used to consider heroes eventually feel exposed, or at least wrong in some public and humiliating way.

But here’s my problem: Jesus said to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me. He didn’t hem and haw about it, either. He didn’t leave a footnote that said, “...unless they really ought to know better. In which case, screw ‘em.”

I’ve gone hunting for that footnote, too. I can’t find it.

Here’s what makes this whole thing harder: I can render a pretty compelling theological case for why my bitterness is justified. I can name the harm that’s being caused. I can trace the structural complicity. I can quote the prophets and draw a straight line from the silence of the many to the suffering of the vulnerable.

And none of that is wrong, exactly. I mean, the harm is real, as is the silence. And the suffering that flows from it is altogether too real.

But I’ve noticed that the theological case for my bitterness has a suspicious tendency to let me off the hook from actually having to do the hard thing. Which is to say, the righteous theological rationalizing of my anger morphs into a reason not to pray for or love my enemies. And after I’ve gotten up a sufficient head of steam, all that justifying of my bitterness can wall off my heart from wanting, even at a distance, something better for people I’d rather just write off.

And as much as I can come up with morally defensible-sounding reasons for not doing as Jesus asked me to do, I don’t want to kid myself that that’s faithfulness, even if I can dress it up in prophetic language.

So where does that leave me?

Honestly, in a place I don’t much care for: stuck somewhere between the command of Jesus and the resistance in my own chest. I feel stuck somewhere between “love your enemies” and “Lord, surely not that guy.”

What I can’t get out of my head is this: Jesus didn’t say loving our enemies was easy, only that it was necessary. And the fact that it costs something, that it runs against every instinct I have, might be exactly the point. Cheap grace, by definition, doesn’t ask anything of us.

But the cross, yeah, that’s expensive.

I’m not going to tell you I’ve prayed for these folks today. I haven’t. But I’m going to try. Not because I’m especially virtuous, or because they deserve it, or because I can manage to muster up some warm feelings toward them. But because I don’t want bitterness to be the thing that finally wins.

Some people I once respected may have lost the plot. But I don’t want to lose it.

Fortunately, Jesus still has the plot firmly in hand. And, inconveniently enough for me, he’s still calling me to pray for the people I’d rather turn into cautionary tales.

So I’ll keep looking for loopholes, I guess. But I already know how this goes. There aren’t any.

There’s just Jesus, standing there with that impossible command, refusing to let my enemies decide for me what kind of person I become.

Be gentle and brave,

Derek

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 .