People really can change.
We just don’t always change our minds about them.
I think about my experience at a class reunion several years back. As much as these people had grown, developed, and experienced life, I struggled to see beyond the impressions I carried from school. My perspective seemed reluctant to accept new information.
For we have a tendency to hold onto our established impressions of others, looking for evidence that we were right about them. It makes the world feel more predictable, but it can also leave us relating to a version of someone they have long since outgrown. Conversely, when I place the shoe on the other foot, I want flexibility. I want others to recognize the changes I have made in my own life, and I am disappointed when they go unnoticed.
That gap becomes even more difficult when someone’s past has given us good reason to distrust them. For God provides forgiveness, but that doesn’t automatically lead to acceptance by those around us.
Saul found himself in just such a situation.
“And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.”
We know the apostle Saul would become; the disciples knew a man they had reason to fear. A man who had been actively persecuting people who shared their faith. No wonder they might be skeptical of his motives and question whether he had really changed.
Being open to someone’s growth doesn’t require us to immediately trust them. But it does require a willingness to hear more than what we already know. For our reputation may precede us, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the final word.
Saul approached the disciples, and his changed life brought him face to face with his old reputation. It is the sort of uncomfortable encounter we readily avoid when we are uncertain whether we will be welcome. We want to belong without enduring the awkward uncertainty of getting there. And, critically, Barnabas stepped in. He brought Saul to the apostles and told them about his encounter with Jesus and his bold preaching in Damascus. He gave them reason to reconsider the man before them. Saul was then able to move among them and speak openly in the name of the Lord.
I think there is a challenge here on both sides.
First, am I willing to let my understanding of someone change? To pause long enough to hear what has happened since the events I still associate with them?
And then the potentially more difficult challenge: can I be patient when others struggle to do the same for me? Can I accept that their hesitation may have something to do with a history I am ready to move on from, but they still have reason to remember?
I want others to make room for who I am becoming. Perhaps I need to make the same room for them.