Malice

It's game day!

 

The coach is starting his favorite players, and for what seems like the hundredth time this season, the skinny not so athletic boy is warming the bench, yet again. He sits there and dutifully cheers his teammates on, but inside harbors the malicious hope that one teammate will play poorly or the team will lose, and the coach will be humiliated.

 

Malice—the desire to see another person hurt, distressed, or brought down—is a vicious attitude we are all familiar with. It's known by many names: spite, pettiness, rancor, animosity. Though we often shrug it off as insignificant and even justifiable, God's Word cites it in several "danger lists."

 

Malice is a poisonous attitude that seriously jeopardizes our spiritual health.   

The word malice comes from the Latin malus, which means "bad." It's used to translate the New Testament word kakia, which means wickedness, evil, ill will, trouble, or harm. Malice is the "badness" in one person wishing bad things on another.

 

The Bible is full of such examples:

 

• King Saul's envy of David caused malice to flow through his veins. Convinced that David was after the throne, Saul and his army pursued David for years.

• The spite Joseph's brothers expressed began with hurt feelings. It was obvious that their father favored Joseph. And Joseph worsened the pain by suggesting his was a greater destiny. The wounds had festered for years when the brothers decided to throw Joseph into a pit and sell him to passing traders.

• Herodius harbored ill will toward John the Baptist for calling attention to her adulterous behavior.

• The Pharisees resented Jesus for not pandering to their egos. 

Envy, hurt, irritation, and pride can all spark malice, convincing us that another person deserves to suffer. The irony of malice, though, is that the greatest damage is what a malicious person inflicts on himself or herself. It's like the bee that stings an enemy in vengeance but, in the process of using its stinger, initiates its own demise. 

 

It's a poison that causes bad blood to run through the veins of our relationships.

Near the end of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln admonished citizens of the fractured nation to have "malice toward none" and "charity for all." Instead of ill will, he called for unmerited kindness and favor. Lincoln's words mirrored Paul's sentiments in Ephesians 4:30-32:

 

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. …Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

 

Paul reasoned that our capacity to respond to others in this way is directly linked to our gratitude for what we have received from the Father, through Jesus. In the absence of malice, God extends unmerited grace toward us. Because of this, we, too, can have charity for all and not malice.