A covenant is a set of mutual promises, and there are lots of reasons we might want to have agreement about what behaviors support the community we envision.

The challenge with envisioning the community we want is that we often think in negative terms. For some of us, it’s easier to think about what we don’t want, and we wind up with a vision more focused on what to avoid. 

This would be like building walls around a community to keep it safe. That’s the way we sometimes think of boundaries. It can be helpful to recognize what’s inside the boundaries of a community and what’s outside of those boundaries. But we often fail to separate people from their behavior. So, instead of acknowledging that hateful or oppressive speech is out of bounds in our context, we decide that the person is unacceptable. 

A limiting covenant is an attempt to protect a community by controlling people’s behavior. When we’re anxious about how much we can trust the people around us, we often think of what kind of restrictions we need rather than what kinds of behaviors would allow everyone to thrive. We want to restrict behavior that makes us uncomfortable. And if someone gets it wrong, we can quickly pass judgment and punish them for being “out of covenant.”  

That weaponized version of covenant might be what some of us bring into any conversation about our mutual promises to one another. It can be a challenge to think about the qualities of a thriving faith community rather than just what we want to avoid. 

A covenant doesn’t have to be like walls around a community, though. It could be a common well from which everyone draws sustenance. Mutual promises that nourish us and bring us all closer to greater wholeness and well-being. That’s what a liberating covenant offers. Where a limiting covenant restricts life, a liberating covenant is life-giving. 

If we imagine a community where we trust one another and can welcome meaningful conflict with love and creativity, we might feel less of a need to control behavior. We can make promises like, “We listen to one another with curiosity and wonder.” And we can make that promise without worrying about restricting what someone is allowed to say. Our commitment to listen with curiosity and wonder isn’t dependent on someone saying something that’s easy to hear.

That promise doesn’t mean that there are no limits on what we say and how we say it. If someone is saying something that doesn’t align with our shared values or principles, we can listen with curiosity and wonder and also invite them back toward our well of mutual sustenance. 

Of course, that covenantal relationship relies on people wanting to drink from the same well. We could invite people back to something they don’t want, but they might choose to draw sustenance from some other well. A liberating covenant can fearlessly embrace that option, too.   

We don’t need people to be perfect, though. We will all make mistakes and find ourselves in need of forgiveness. Navigating those moments of imperfection is exactly what strengthens authentic, meaningful, covenantal relationships. A liberating covenant casts hopeful vision for who we can be and what we can co-create together.

Are you more inclined to think of a covenant as a wall or a well? How can you shift a desire to control or restrict behavior into a more liberating expression of hopeful commitment?