From Paul E. Miller’s A Loving Life In a World of Broken Relationships:
Even though Naomi has named herself “bitter Naomi,” God has not. In the Greek or pagan worldview people are locked into fixed descriptions, like Homer’s “swift Ulysses.” Paganism is rigid. Your label defines you. But because of the intrusion of God’s grace, biblical characters are a “center of surprise”; they have the capacity for change. So we never read about “angry Moses” or “wily Jacob.”
Oddly enough, Christians have labeled Naomi “bitter Naomi.” But neither our sin nor our environment defines us. We are not trapped by our own moodiness or despair. We can change because an infinite God is personally involved in the details of our lives. As bearers of God’s image, we can cry out for mercy and see God act in our circumstances or in our hearts. Jesus’s “judge not” is a call to give people space to change, to back off from locking in on exclusively negative views. Especially in long-term relationships, we run the risk of locking onto a person’s negatives and going pagan on them.
