What is a reasonable amount of time to forgive a spouse for being unfaithful?
Dear Gramps,
questions:
1) In Leviticus, chapter 12, it refers to the time a woman was considered unclean after giving birth. Why was that length of time twice as long for the birth of a baby girl than for a baby boy?
2) Have you any idea what would be considered a reasonable amount of time for a person to be able to forgive and heal emotionally when their spouse has been unfaithful to temple marriage covenants and/or been abuse to the family?
Michelle, from Utah
Dear Michelle,
As to question No. 1, I have no idea.
As to question No. 2, the amount of time for such healing and forgiving would depend strictly on the individual, on how closely they live to the Lord in order to understand the great principle of forgiveness that he exemplified in his life and through the effects of his great atoning sacrifice. He said on one occasion, while hanging on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And on another, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men” (D&C 64:10).
Gramps
answer to #1: the numbers are symbolic. It was seven days for a boy, (seven days of creation, seven angels, seven dispensations) and on the eighth he was circumcised (in remembrance of baptism at 8 years). The woman then waited 33 days more, which I think was the age Christ was when he was crucified.
The waiting time for girls was 14 days, then 66 days after that. What’s the importance here? Between these are generally the years of childbearing, an essential facet in God’s plan, so much that it has even been said that women “shall be saved in childbearing” (1 Tim. 2:15), and where true joy of it compensated the pain felt by Eve from the Fall. (Moses 5:11)