Rahab is one of my favorite characters from the Bible. She saved two Israelite spies from certain death. She bore her testimony of a God and a religion she had never been taught. She saved her extended family from a war that wiped out the rest of her city. She married an Israelite prince, raised the Bible hero Boaz, and became an ancestor of Jesus Christ himself.
And yet, just about everywhere that she's mentioned, she's labeled Rahab the harlot.
Change is one of the defining characteristics of mortality. To change is the meaning of repentance, which means that change is a core doctrine of Christianity. Yet somehow, we struggle to accept that people can and do change constantly.
If I say "Scrooge", you think "bah humbug", even though the man at the end of The Christmas Carol is a completely different person than the Ebenezer Scrooge at the beginning of the book. All of the Disney merch for Encanto shows the character Isabel as the controlled perfectionist from the beginning of the movie. I'd be the first one in line if they released merch of her in her dyed dress from the end, after she embraced her "imperfections". Several times in Harry Potter, Harry rebuffs the argument that his flawed former heroes were young by pointing out that they were his age. I always want to stop reading and tell him that it's not the age, it's that they've had a long time to change.
There's a lot that can be said about the importance of setting healthy boundaries and protecting yourself from other people. I don't want to diminish that. But I hope that we leave room in our hearts and our minds to allow others--and ourselves!--to change.
