A young man once said to me, “I hate everyone. I pray that God will take my hate away, but all I feel is hate.”

I smiled. I smiled because it brought to mind a day in 1999 when I confessed to a friend that I hated God and my life and everyone, and I wanted to die. And guess what? She smiled. And then she said, “That’s great!” And when I inquired of how something as awful as hate and wanting to die could possibly be great, she replied, “Gut level honesty.”She was right, of course. The day I felt furthest from God was the day I moved towards Him by way of honest confession.

A few days after the young man’s priceless confession to me, I experienced a God-ordained stumble across Psalm 139: 22: “I hate them with perfect hatred.” Imagine a thought bubble over my head; Perfect hatred? What’s that?

(Who knew there was such a thing.) I’d always been taught that hate is evil. Protestants are urged to leave their sufferings at the foot of the cross. Catholics are taught to unite their suffering to [it]. I’ve been both—though I remain the latter. What’s an abuse survivor drowning in raw emotion supposed to do with feelings of this nature? Human emotion, after all, comes from God, who created man in his image. So why do we deny ourselves the dignity of emotion? Why do we shame ourselves for feeling?

Nerd that I am, I consulted my copy of the King James New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (2001 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.). To per-fect something is to bring it to the end of itself. “Hebrew #8503: taklyth, tak-leeth; from 3615; completion; by imply. an extremity.—end, perfect (ion).”

I’m no theologian. I’m a Christ following book-nerd survivor—but believe me, I’ve been schooled. And this what I know to be true:

All manner of abuse is grievous to God, and sinful. In the beginning, I hated the folks who abused me. It’s fair to say that I even hated them in the middle. But somewhere along the way, Divine Mercy transformed my hate towards abusers and brought it to its rightful order. (To it’s completion-the end of it’s fleshly self, you might say.)Today I hate no man, or woman. I do, however, hate all manner of abuse.

God, the author of hate, perfected my hate. The passion of hate is not inherently evil.

Cheers to St. Thomas Aquinas, and thanks be to God!