covenant

At one point, when the church still had lots of power over me, I told my husband that I would keep the temple covenants I made, even if my beliefs about the church as the One True Church changed. Because I’d made a promise, and I have integrity enough to keep it!

Then one day I read to my son a children’s story set in Japan about a man who loved cherries. He looked forward to eating cherries for that week or so out of the year when his trees bore fruit. He generously shared his harvest with the local foxes. But one of the foxes was selfish, and schemed to trick the old man into covenanting all his trees to the fox. Eventually, the man found out he was tricked by the fox, and the fox asked for the man’s forgiveness. But the man still upheld his promise to the fox. Because a promise is a promise, after all.

I thought that was the most ridiculous reasoning on the part of the man. He had been tricked, and the repentant fox didn’t even want to hold him to the promise! Then I “likened the story unto me” and realized I was holding myself to a ridiculous covenant, too. I had made the covenants not even knowing beforehand what the covenants would be; there had been intense social pressure to go through with the covenants; and I was deceived into thinking that my entire salvation rested on the covenants.

Some TBMs are appalled to see ex-Mormons “breaking their covenants.”

But it’s not breaking covenants if the covenants simply dissolve, if they simply don’t mean anything anymore. Who had I even made the covenants with? The church? Heavenly Father? Neither held sway over me anymore. Therefore, I had made the covenants with no one but myself, and I could release myself from them.

(In the story, the fox does convince the old man to withdraw his promise, and everyone shares in the cherries once again. Cherries were shared. Smiles were smiled. Good times were had by all.)