3334) I discovered as a language arts teacher that I had a major gap in my understanding of something big within the history of the World War II era. We were reading a book that focused on the evil man Joseph Stalin was. Though I had a good understanding of Adolf Hitler and the atrocities he created, I had not realized the horrors of Stalin’s regime. What evil both of these physical bodies held!

Paul states in Titus 3:3 that God’s children should not harbor malice. Malice in this verse means to desire to do evil. What? Can someone be a Christian and harbor malice in their heart? That’s a good question, and it brings another to mind, too. Can someone be a Christian and be a murderer? Jesus answers these questions. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), he clarifies that if we harbor the predecessors of murder, (such as being angry with someone) we have become murderers in our hearts. Jesus also said in Matthew 9:4 that some teachers of the law harbored evil thoughts.

It’s easy to sit back and think, we’re not murderers nor will we ever be the evil people Stalin and Hitler were, but we need to slow down and ponder this. Jesus tells us to watch out for the seeds of evil and murder within our hearts; to be on guard against them. After all, the man after God’s own heart was a murderer: King David. (Acts 13:22)

May malice be something we watch for and if we see the seeds beginning to sprout, may we, with God’s help, pull them out, roots and all.