I suppose the reasons the tools were broken in the first place might influence that answer a bit — whether the neighbor was careless, negligent, or if it was just an honest mistake. But it seems that there is still some judgment involved if we hold on to that past “offense” and filter our future interaction through it with the expectation that they will offend us again.

On the other hand, such reasoning could lead to the idea that we need to step in and prevent all actions through compulsive means because we don’t want anyone to sin. And that is a plan we know to have been proposed and rejected.

I think the answer may be that we remember the nature of those we deal with, even as we forgive them, and we do what we can do to prevent such situations from recurring, but we draw the line and trying to force some sort of goodness.

I’ve mentioned my relative who forgave her father for physical abuse. Would it really mean anything to say she forgave him if she didn’t recall what he had done? Instead she has accepted what he did as part of who he was and chosen to love him in spite of what he did. Forgiveness, to me, requires knowledge and a conscious decision to let the Atonement work and make up the difference. It isn’t closing one’s eyes…

D&C 58: 42
42 Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

If God forgot something, wouldn’t that be something he doesn’t know anymore? But if God is omniscient, how could there be something he doesn’t know? So I suspect in this case the “forgetting” is not literal, but is more in the sense that those sins just don’t matter anymore.

I think to forgive and forget means letting the ‘justice’ be with God, let go of retribution; be clear that forgiving doesn’t mean what someone did that hurt was ‘ok’– but trusting (having faith) that there IS ultimate justice and mercy– It relieves us of the burden of carrying anger– It even helps our physical health to forgive and not carry offense through remembering (hanging on to anger). I agree with Jessaway, I think to ‘forget’ means to let go of the emotion associated with the act. But choosing to Be Smart as Pres Hinckley would say.

You struck a nerve here. Forgive the lengthy epistle:

I like the idea of letting the justice be with God – that is always a good policy. Now weeding out those people who think they ARE god, well….

I think forgiveness – or the perception of forgiveness – can get very tricky in those rare occasions (is it really that rare?) when the person who has committed the offense makes a rhetorical lick-and-a-promise attempt at repentance and then doesn’t understand why the offended person is still choosing to be offended.

The offender, seeking to be rid of the burden of offense, says and does the things that they have been taught to say and do in church, and they wash their hands of it, and feel liberated, and they move on. But too many times they don’t really take the time to explore exactly what they have done – they don’t really acknowledge or understand or appreciate the impact it has had on so many lives – they don’t really change – they just feel better.

I think this is a part of our church culture – a traditional machine of “ask for repentance and receive forgiveness” which can be abused, intentionally or not. The offender is allowed to feel better and “move on” and essentially hide from the consequences of their actions as if the consequences simply –whisk! – blow away completely (like those leafs in Camelot), at night, of course.

But while the offender may have moved on in their own lives, they haven’t really fixed what they broke – and then when the people who were broken still feel hurt, it only makes the original offense more poignant when the “repentant offender” points to the machine and tells them that their lingering pain means that they just haven’t forgiven the right way, or that by remembering the offense they are trying to drag the “repentant person” back into the muck and cankering their own hearts in the process, keeping themselves from more God-like understanding which their evident lack of forgiveness indicates to be the true state of their unforgiving soul.

May I quote the Church Lady here without fear of punishment? “How conveeeeeenient.”

Maybe, as you suggest, the person resists forgiving because they feel that forgiving is an acknowledgment that it didn’t really matter. Maybe they resist forgiving because the offender’s repentance felt phony.

OR… Maybe they DID forgive (in the Jessawhy way – happy for their happiness, no desires for revenge) but they also have learned (in the Simonds Ryder way) not to lend their tools to that neighbor anymore – but the neighbor has been through the machine and they don’t understand why in the world this person is not lending the tools anymore. It must be because they are still holding on to the past and are still so angry and cankering their soul by not forgiving. There are many potentially paralyzing possibilities – it is easy to get Lost in them. And we can’t all be John Locke.

To me, true repentance and forgiveness include the ability to talk about the offense, not burry it. It includes the ability to remember honestly, to remorse occasionally, to laugh and joke about it frequently (using humor as both a distancing tool and a channel for any lingering or recurring aggression that might arise towards the original offense – it can also be a way of saying “let’s not go through that again” if you are getting close to going through it again). For me, I want to be able to do all of those things, and in the end, the measure of true forgiveness for me is to be able to say “I love you and I wish you all the best” and mean it.