Fatimus McGee

I just watched a video on the Mormon Channel’s YouTube channel about bullying. It uses the Stop It General Conference talk from Uchdorf as the narration. 

Now it may be the vodka talking, but it brought me to tears. The message is worthwhile, if you remove the religious mumbo jumbo. Yes, “we are not perfect and the people around us are not perfect.” Yes, we have all felt anger and contention towards someone or something.

"Haven’t we all at one time or another meekly approached the mercy seat and pleaded for grace? Haven’t we wished with all the energy of our souls for mercy, to be forgiven for the mistakes we have made and the sins we have committed?”

At that point in the video, the tears came. Of course we have all made mistakes and, of course, we have all sought forgiveness, if not from a higher power then from the people we have wronged and, maybe more importantly, from ourselves. This is a universal want. It obviously resonated with me. Hence the tears. Vodka or no.

This is one thing I miss now that I am a non-believer: forgiveness, feeling as if my slate has been wiped clean. I received a blessing once when I was an adult in which I was forgiven of my sins. That felt great. Now that I no longer drink the Kool-Aid, finding that feeling of forgiveness is much harder.

Where do we go when there is no “mercy seat”? 

Forgiveness has to come from ourselves. It is one thing to have a bishop arbitrarily forgive us in a blessing. It is something else to be able to forgive ourselves without the help of a god who isn’t there.