Covenants & Contracts

Towards a Tangible Trust

When I was little, I loved musicals. My mom took me to see a high school production of Brigadoon when I was seven, and I was smitten. The local public library had about a dozen records of soundtracks that it loaned out, and I learned them all by heart. It has been one of the great disappointments of my grown-up life that people do not randomly burst into song nearly as often as I was led to hope. (On the other hand, quicksand has turned out to be a much less common hazard than I feared, so on balance, things have turned out OK, I think.)

One of my favorite musicals was Camelot. My mom always talks about how embarrassing it was to have an eight-year-old running around singing “The Lusty Month of May.” But I wasn’t very interested in the Arthur–Lancelot–Guinevere triangle; what I loved was the fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table, their open talk of honor and loyalty and noble love. I was an odd, nerdy, and kind of lonely little kid, and I longed for that idealistic friendship.

When I was ten, our stake put on a musical about the early Latter-day Saints’ attempt at living the Law of Consecration in Orderville. I still remember the chorus of my favorite song: “Love thy neighbor—not an easy thing to do / especially when your neighbor’s not as lovable as you!”

What these musicals have in common is that the Round Table and the United Order were both communities established by covenant. And to borrow from yet another tale of knights and true love, covenant is one of those words we keep saying, but “I do not think it means what you think it means!” We often think and talk about covenants as contracts—lists of mutual obligations—but understanding the differences between covenants and contracts can transform the way we live and love as members of the family of God.

Bonds of Loyalty

The earliest covenants we know about were diplomatic treaties establishing relationships between kings—usually between a greater king, called a suzerain, and a lesser king, or vassal. These covenants followed a specific form: they opened with a preamble, declaring the suzerain’s name and the elements of his greatness. Next, they described the historical relationship between the suzerain and the vassal king, emphasizing the things the greater king has done to benefit the lesser one, and then they lay out the terms of the covenant, or what each party would do for the other. One way these covenants differ from what we think of as contracts is that the parties are sometimes enjoined to “love” each other—for instance, an Assyrian treaty from the seventh century BC says to the vassals, “You will love as yourselves Assurbanipal.” There are several examples of such treaties, or elements of them, in the Old Testament.