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A moment of reflection, honesty, and remembrance.
There are moments in life where evil shows its face so boldly, so arrogantly, that when it collapses in full view, the tension of our hearts is pulled in two directions. On the one hand, we rejoice, because what is corrupt, venomous, and destructive has been cut down, and we know that Yahweh Himself has triumphed over malice. On the other hand, we grieve, because the one who carried that malice was still a human being, still made in the image of God, still a vessel that could have chosen differently, still a life that might have been redeemed had it turned away from its infection. This deep dive is an attempt to stand firmly in that tension: to rejoice over the destruction of malice, but also to acknowledge the tragedy of its host. It is to bring into the light the biblical truth that evil does not exist in a vacuum. It requires a vessel, a host, a person willing to carry it, embody it, project it. And when God destroys malice, it often means that the host is destroyed with it. The celebration of justice and the mourning of loss become intertwined.
The word that unites all the manifestations of evil we see today—racism, bigotry, misogyny, prejudice, homophobia, and every form of hatred—is malice. Malice is the umbrella term that exposes them all for what they are: not simply opinions, not random choices, not innocent mistakes, but deliberate corruptions of the human heart. Malice is the willful intent to harm, to oppress, to diminish, to scorn, to hate. It is ill will weaponized. Racism is malice directed at skin. Misogyny is malice directed at gender. Homophobia is malice directed at identity. Prejudice is malice wrapped in judgment without knowledge. They all stem from the same poisoned root. Scripture speaks clearly about this. Ephesians 4:31 commands us to put away all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and every form of malice. Colossians 3:8 says to put them all aside. Titus 3:3 reminds us that we ourselves once were foolish, disobedient, enslaved to lusts, spending our life in malice and envy. Malice is not a mere character flaw. It is the very seedbed of corruption.
The nature of malice is that it is an infection. It does not simply appear in a person overnight. No one wakes up and suddenly decides to hate. Malice is taught, transmitted, absorbed. Proverbs 22:6 reminds us that the way a child is trained shapes their path. Psalm 58:3 declares that the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies—they inherit, they absorb, they breathe in what is around them. Yehoshua Himself said in John 8:44 that those who practice hatred and lies show their true father to be the devil. Malice is contagious, generational, cultural. It spreads like a virus. Hebrews 12:15 warns us of a root of bitterness springing up and defiling many. Paul compared it to yeast in 1 Corinthians 5:6–7, saying a little leaven leavens the whole lump. This infection does not remain isolated. One person’s malice can poison families, communities, nations. It is both taught and caught.
And yet, malice cannot exist on its own. It requires a host. Like a virus that cannot live outside a living cell, malice needs a vessel to carry it. Genesis 4:7 gives us the image of sin crouching at Cain’s door, desiring to consume him, but requiring his cooperation to enter. Romans 6:16 explains that we are slaves of the one we obey—whether of sin leading to death or obedience leading to righteousness. James 1:14–15 describes how desire gives birth to sin, and sin when fully grown brings forth death. Malice is not some free-floating shadow. It attaches itself to a person, and that person becomes its host. Pharaoh became the host of pride, cruelty, and oppression, and it led to his ruin in the Red Sea. Haman in the book of Esther became the host of hatred against the Jews, and it ended with him hanging on the very gallows he built for Mordecai. Judas became the host of betrayal, opening himself so fully to malice that John 13:27 records that Satan entered him. These hosts are not neutral. They are vessels of choice, and when they choose to carry malice, the end is always destruction.
But Yahweh does not leave malice unchecked. He acts to eradicate it. The Bible is full of songs of triumph when God destroys evil and delivers His people. After Pharaoh’s army drowned, Moses and Israel sang in Exodus 15: I will sing to Yahweh, for He is highly exalted; the horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. Deborah and Barak sang in Judges 5 after Sisera’s defeat, rejoicing that Yahweh had overthrown the oppressor. The psalms repeatedly declare that the wicked will perish like grass, but Yahweh will be exalted forever (Psalm 92:7–9). Revelation shows the climax, where in chapters 18 and 19 the fall of Babylon—the great counterfeit system of oppression—is celebrated in heaven. A multitude cries out, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, because His judgments are true and righteous. This is celebration. This is rejoicing. Not in suffering for suffering’s sake, but in justice, in the cutting off of malice at its root, in the vindication of God’s holiness.
Yet this rejoicing does not erase the tragedy of the host. Ezekiel 18:23 records Yahweh asking, Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, rather than that he should turn from his ways and live? Ezekiel 33:11 echoes it: I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that they turn and live. Yehoshua lamented over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37, crying that He wanted to gather them as a hen gathers her chicks, but they were unwilling. Romans 9:22 describes vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. These verses show the tension: God rejoices in justice, but He grieves the loss of those who refuse repentance. The host could have been healed. They could have been redeemed. They chose to carry the infection until it consumed them. And so when malice is destroyed, we both celebrate and mourn. We celebrate because evil is cut off. We mourn because a bearer of God’s image is lost with it.
This tension is laid bare in our own time through the tragedy of Charlie Kirk. He was a man deeply infected with malice, with no intent of cure. His public words and posture reflected arrogance, hostility, prejudice, and condescension. I did not like him, and I have no problem saying so plainly. But when he died, what we witnessed was not simply the death of a man—it was the destruction of malice through its host. The distinction matters. We do not celebrate his death, we recognize it as tragedy. But we do rejoice that the infection he embodied can no longer spread through him. This is the difference between vengeance and justice. It is the difference between spite and truth.
Charlie’s case also exposes the counterfeit at its ugliest. He called himself a Christian. Yet his life and speech embodied malice, not love. This is the epitome of counterfeit Christianity: claiming the name of Yehoshua while walking in the exact opposite spirit. And as we have already proven in other studies, Christianity itself is counterfeit—an institution built on substitution and distortion. So his claim was counterfeit within the counterfeit. Malice wrapped in counterfeit religion becomes toxic beyond measure. It produces venom, division, arrogance, and eventually, destruction.
The irony of his death was almost prophetic in its sharpness. In the middle of a heated debate about gun violence, he was mocking the tragedies of mass shootings, minimizing them, attempting to deflect blame. In a moment of condescension, trying to pivot to gang violence, he himself was struck down by gun violence. The very subject he dismissed became his end. That is not random chance—that is the kind of poetic justice Scripture reveals again and again. Pharaoh was drowned in the waters he used to enslave Israel. Haman was hanged on the gallows he prepared for another. Judas was destroyed by the silver he thought would give him power. Malice always turns back on its host. Irony becomes the seal of judgment.
For the New Creation, this carries sobering application. When we see evil destroyed in our world, we must be careful to rejoice in justice without falling into the malice of vengeance. We must give glory to Yahweh for purging infection, but we must also hold the tension of compassion, mourning the lost host. Colossians 3:8–10 calls us to put off malice, anger, and slander, and to put on the new self. Ephesians 4:31–32 tells us to replace malice with kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness. We cannot become hosts of the very thing we condemn. Instead, we must embody the Pneumocryst: rejoicing with heaven when justice is done, but also being living warnings of the tragedy of those who refuse to repent. Our calling is to project the kingdom response—to celebrate justice, to witness tragedy as a sober lesson, and to extend restoration wherever possible before judgment comes.
So we return to the heart of the matter. Malice is an infection that requires a host. When Yahweh destroys malice, His people rightly rejoice, because evil has been cut off. But the tragedy remains: the host is lost with it. The case of Charlie Kirk shows how counterfeit religion and malice together lead to irony, judgment, and exposure. And yet, even here, even with a man I did not like, I find myself compelled to honor his humanity. His death was disturbing. His life was marked by malice. But he was still a human being, still an image-bearer of God. And for that reason, this deep dive is also a way of honoring his memory—not his choices, not his malice, not his counterfeit religion, but his human life. Because life is precious. And this is why those who possess it must do everything they can to rid themselves of malice. To unlearn it. To repent of it. To change before it is too late. I admit it feels strange to say I want to honor him when I disliked him so greatly, but perhaps this is the very demonstration of the Pneumocryst as the New Creation: to rejoice in justice while still acknowledging the sacredness of human life.
This is the call and the example. Malice will always consume its host. Justice will always rejoice at its destruction. But compassion must always remember that every host could have been redeemed, had they chosen to turn. As the New Creation, we live in that tension, rejoicing when malice dies, lamenting when its host is lost, and urging all people to rid themselves of malice before it is too late.
