Religions are ever-evolving ideas and practices, and like rivers, which are broadly similar and recognizable even over spans of time, can never be practiced or experienced the same way twice.

A useful analogy here might be the idea of having a conversation with a text. Much the way you'd have dramatically different conversations with your family versus your friends, your teachers, or a stranger in line at the store, you'll approach each particular in a different way based on the various contexts in which both they exist and the contexts which you bring to them.

Umberto Eco indicates that every work of art can be read in one of three ways: - moral, - allegorical - anagogical

Compare this to early Christianities which had various different readings of the scriptures.

Relate this also to the idea of Heraclitus and the not stepping into the same river twice as a viewer can view a work multiple times in different physical and personal contexts which will change their mood and interpretation of the work.

Should people be judged by statements made in their youth or decades prior? Shouldn't they be given some credit for changing over time and becoming better?

How can we as a society provide credit to people's changed contexts over time?

This can be related to Heraclitus' river.