Is the enemy chaotic-evil and unredeemable?
I learned in a writing class that no one is a hundred percent evil, so, writing your novel’s villain that way will actually make him less threatening. That kind of antagonist is comical—a caricature like Snidely Whiplash.

If you aren’t old enough to remember the cartoon that made me fear handlebar mustaches, Wikipedia says of him, “Whiplash is obsessed with tying young women to railroad tracks; he has no reason to do so and realizes no gain, profit or advantage, but is simply compelled to do it.”
The writing class suggestion was to show your villain do something kind. The instructor mentioned a scene where a bad guy stops on the way into the house where he planned evil, to pet a kitten. (I think the example came from a book or movie, but I can’t remember where.)
Even better, give the killer something he loves. Or a complicated emotion, like a desire to protect something in the midst of his mayhem. This makes him more realistic, and therefore, scarier.
I’ll tell you, I have met abusive people who were overly dramatic and affectionate to their dog in public. “Animals trust me, you should too…” as though dogs don’t lick an abusive hand. So, making the antagonist more realistic this way rang true for me when crafting fictional characters.
Relatable
Besides the realism, another reason a complicated villain becomes scarier is that you can see yourself in them. But isn’t it unnerving if they’re too redeemable? It’s hard to cheer at their destruction if you see yourself in them.
We want God to take us as a package and hope the redeemable outweighs the rest. He wouldn’t annihilate me if there is something redeemable, right? (Part of coming to faith is realizing that the only thing redeemable is Christ’s covering, and any good you’ve done was a work he created you to do.)
But what if that measurement of being redeemable tipped in favor of someone you hated? Could you still call them an enemy or go to war with them? Could you desire their destruction?
Un-relatable
I think it would be too hard to justify war if you thought of the people as redeemable. You need to view them as evil with nothing salvageable. And I think one way we do this is to disregard individual faces, to see them as a whole. They are collectively unredeemable.
And the first step to seeing them as a collective is to name them.
Us and them
I think of conversations I heard when I was a child regarding people we’d gone to war against. Pejoratives serve the purpose of naming, grouping, and defacing. They enable the speaker and the listener to disassociate the humanity of the one being discussed. It tips the scales. It lowers them from your status of being made in the image of God, a divine image bearer.
You might never use a slur but still say the nationality, religion, sexuality or politics of your “enemy” like it is a cuss word and mean the same thing.
You make them a caricature of a villain.
But maybe even Russians love their kids, too
I remember my grandma’s fear when she mentioned The Bataan Death March by the Japanese during World War II. It’s a story that loses some of its shock, though, when you look at the United States’ inhumanity during the Trail of Tears. For several summers we hosted Japanese exchange students, and they were no longer some less-than-human group from a foreign place. They were kids. With faces. If you want to see this working for Israeli and Palestinian teens, check out Friends of Roots.
Governments plan and execute war. Unless we are the government, our responsibility is different. Psalm 131:1 says, My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
The matters I should be concerning myself with are how I think of and speak of other humans. Both those in my sphere, and those on the other side of the world. Even if the other group wants to destroy my country, take my money and my freedom. Even if they are my enemy. If I only love those who love me, what good is that to me? Just because salvation is free, why do we think everything after is easy?
Made in the image of God
I can speak from experience what it feels like to be less than. A false doctrine I had to put into words to unearth was that God made man for himself, and woman was a trinket that he made for his beloved (man). I really stumbled over 1 Corinthians 11:9 when I was a young mom coming back to Christ. Learning that woman is made in the image of God, not just created for man, gave me identity and joy. And when man does not value woman as equal, he is not acting out the hand of God. It elevated me, and I’ll never let that identity go. We’re a tool of the enemy if we ever let anyone believe they are less than a divine image bearer, with equal worth and status.
A fool
I used to be confused why Proverbs spent so much ink on defining and calling out who is a fool—but Jesus said if you called someone a fool; you were in danger of hell-fire. It felt like a contradiction since I could see so many fools by Proverb’s standards.
Partly from the Bible Project’s Sermon on the Mount series, I’ve come to understand Christ’s intent as: don’t even start down that path of lowering someone in status. Declaring someone unworthy is the first step to murder. How you speak of your antagonist is one way to live out the call to love your enemy, as we’re told to do in Matthew 5:43-48. And the names you use to describe your enemy can either deface them or remind you of their God-given status.
We’ve been told to judge people’s fruit and actions because there is demonic evil in the world. Still, discerning evil does not excuse you from loving your enemy. If we have the law written in our hearts, we have different expectations, regardless of how the world operates.
My point is to tread carefully anytime you use labels for yourself and others. Because that path leads to disassociating their humanity, their status as image of God.
All humanity is capable of evil
No villain is a caricature. We are each capable of atrocity by starting down the path of looking at someone as less than ourself. We should remember Christ’s warning wherever we think, “They’re an idiot.”
We should think of the danger of hell-fire when we use a slur or dehumanize a group either for their political agenda, nationality, or religion. Yep, even their religion.
Well, unless you are not a bondservant of the Lord’s. Then you can do whatever you want with your body, mind and money.