Malice (Colossians 3:8) is bottled-up anger that becomes a twisted, bitter lens through which a person sees someone — the opposite of wrath.

Malice is not releasing anger outwardly but holding it inside until it becomes an evil way of seeing someone. Signs include: unable to receive kind words from that person at face value, unable to approve of anything they do, rolling eyes at their name, defaulting to negativity when they're mentioned. Mike connects malice to how some skeptics read Scripture — projecting negative intent onto passages that, read dispassionately, say no such thing. He suggests malice may be a factor in why a Christian and a skeptic reading the same passage reach opposite conclusions.