Confrontation at its essence is the comparison of two value systems.  Person A (the confronter) brings the comparison of his value system with the perceived actions, speech, and thoughts of Person B.  The goal of confrontation is to enroll person B into directing his actions to align with the value system of Person A.  

Confrontation has within it the implication of war, harsh tones, judgment, and condemnation.  And certainly, confrontation can be an unpleasant emotional battle with an offensive struggle to overcome the defensive ego and value system of the opponent in order to produce change.

But, when the confronted person and confronter both frame confrontation as an opportunity to grow in righteousness, the confrontation of values can be a bonding experience of teamwork, mutual service, and long term gain.  People lower their defenses, and open to the comments, observations, and criticisms of others when they are treated with respect for their struggle with an aspect of the human condition.   

The approaches, context, and factors that make confrontation appropriate and successful include:

The sense and feeling of pride is one of the soul pressures that cause us to defend our position, actions, statements, and ideas.  Pride arises in situations where we are challenged around our images of self-superiority, being right, looking good, peer esteem, and public admiration.  Pride causes us to desire these social positions and hunger the associated pleasure.  The soul is easily programmed to desire the experience and circumstances that stimulate feelings of pride.  

The body-soul-mind-brain generates the various perceived emotions and desires by the neural stimulus of the associated brain centers, which in turn generates a soul pattern, which in turn is perceived by the spirit.  The spirit is the point of consciousness given by God, and is conscious, capable of imprint, can recognize the archetypes, and may project influence on the soul.  Thus, the spirit is the ultimate perceiver of signals generated by the soul, and it may override the automatic motor signals arising from the soul’s training in reaction.  Thus, given the soul’s desirous experience of pride, and avoidance of humiliation, the spirit may experience pain when challenged, accused, or criticized.  

The soul/ego-structure is composed of many logical and emotional elements (pride, lust, anger, fear, sorrow, joy...) that contribute to behavior that drives a man to approach, trust and bond, or avoid, attack, and defend himself from other people and situations.  The ego is isolated from other people because of the separation in space, bodies, and nervous systems.  Each person has a unique processing sequence, valuation of rewards, bank of experience, and spatial perspective.  The preeminence of the personal perspective easily seduces us into feeling right and superior to those who perceive and process in a different manner.  But, only God can accurately judge without fail the righteousness of a man’s thought speech and actions, and He does not usually speak openly and directly to correct men in their errors.  

Therefore, we must be open to the voice of conscience (The Holy Spirit), and the input of others.  Every man has his own perspective.  It is not possible just to take another man’s perspective as the eternal, transcendent, or absolute God’s Truth.  Rather, each person speaks truth from his own perspective, and may actually speak God’s truth for that situation and moment.  The comparison of many different perspectives, plus listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and the Words of Scripture, make it possible to illuminate the truth of a situation.  (Proverbs 11:14  Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.)  The counsel of those who have calibrated their judgment to the word of God is especially valuable.  Until a man recognizes the limitations and attractiveness of his own personal perspective, he is vulnerable to the pull of chauvinistic obedience to his own ideas, thoughts, concepts, and valuations.  Thus, he will act according to the way that is right in his own mind.  (Proverbs 12:15  The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.)  Until we feed our spirit with the Word of God, exercise our and listen to perspectives outside our own, we will act like fools.  

Thus, the ego responds with various types of defense to confrontation and correction.  The confronted person may attack opposing perspectives as inaccurate, disparage the character of the messenger, and/or rationalize the logic of his own opinion.  The position may be held in place by subconscious programs with strong pleasurable or aversive emotions such as happiness, fear, anger, or sorrow.  In general, people are driven to think, speak, and act strongly to satisfy their emotional drives, but reason can override passion, just as passion can override reason.  Men are given a measure of predisposition to heed reason and passion at birth.  The process of growing in life likewise imprints and programs the soul to habitually respond.  But, both passion and reason can be programmed and reprogrammed to an extent throughout life.  

The investment in personal perspective is inherent to human nature because we only perceive directly through our own senses.  Thus, it is easy to adopt the belief that there are no other valid perceptions, perspectives, value systems, or logical evaluations of the force trajectories in life.

The importance of the various perceptions rise and fall due to the long and short term threats and/or benefits they represent.  The stimuli of life (circumstances of the moment as perceived by the senses) can be connected to the subconscious emotional patterns of reactivity established by previous experiences of pain and pleasure.  If these subconscious associations, and programs were established early in life, frequently repeated, and/or have great consequence, they can operate strongly in the psyche, and without awareness of their effect in shading current life evaluations.

The challenge of confrontation is to disarm the defenses and enroll Person B (the confronted) so that he will allow entry into the sacred chambers of his ego where values, principles, self concept, and emotional programs reside.  All of these ego factors are interdependent and implanted by God.  They drive us to Live, Love, Learn, and Leave a Legacy.  As a general emotional shorthand, we equate pain with death, and pleasure with life.  Even so, we have been given the freedom and flexibility to reverse associations, and assign pleasure to death and pain.  When such reversals are programmed by trauma, vow, or misunderstanding, the quality of life is compromised.  These errors may be held by subconscious reactive programs, or the erroneous logic of the conscious mind.

The will is supreme in directing a man’s life, and it always chooses the outcome it considers best, true, and right (for self, others, and God).  Even the choice of pursing pain can be understood in terms of  valuing pain or death as having a valuable collateral outcome or reward.  Thus, an important part of gaining trust and defusing the defenses of the confronted person is to acknowledge the truth, value, and reason for a man’s actions, motives, and reactions.

Each day, life teaches us the outcome and meaning of various situations, forces, sequences, and perceptions.  We learn to associate stimuli with pleasure and pain and thus evaluate the results of each life-experience-complex in terms of our particular rating and weighting system.  We develop values based upon that complex of stimulus-response patterns, the associated emotion and logic tree, and the weighting of significance applied to these experiences.  The emotional-sensory experiences of pleasure and pain are the early warning indicators that move us toward survival and away from death.

When care, compassion, respect, interest, and understanding are present, the heart may open to confrontation and scrutiny of its motives.  We all make mistakes and worse, but there is a an emotion and logical reason behind every person’s decision to violate a principle of right conduct.  If we approach our fellow man with the respect that he has a logic which seemed valid to him, this lowers one of the barriers to enrolling him in coming alongside of the confrontation willingly as a partner in the process of growth.

To engage in this discussion requires that we do a certain amount of violence to the conventional definition of the word “respect”.  Thus, in the following discussion we shall give the word “respect” a series of definitions, each of which are applicable only in the evolutionary complex.  

The conventional use of the word “Respect” implies that a man has behaved in a way we consider perfect, good, excellent, and worthy of praise and adulation.  But, perfection is outside of the realm of human possibility, so we cannot withhold respect until performance matches an ideal level.  Rather, we give true positive respect to those who have given their best effort and truly have the intention to reach the highest attainable levels of performance.

An alternative definition of “respect” must be established for the purposes of confrontation.  In the “listening, understanding, and rapport-building” stage of conversation and counseling, giving a man respect does not require that he be perfect in his action or motive.  Rather, while listening we respect a man for the fact that he is a man, and faces the trials and difficulties of being human.  Every man faces the temptation to violate the patterns of Godly perfection.  Everyone is imperfect in their motives, execution of life, and judgment of right.  Thus, we begin each confrontation with a foundational humility that comes from recognizing the difficulty associated with being human.  Failure and error are common in us all, and each man faces a different set of stressors that confront his unique set of strengths, weaknesses.  None of us can claim mastery, nor can we know how we would have responded to a particular circumstance if we were literally the other person.  Thus, we give each man the respect of honoring the fact that he is facing a personal struggle, and possibly failure, just as we struggle and fail with our own challenges.  The respect we speak of here is more of a commiseration of fellow life travelers.  It is the same respect for understanding our failures as would be desired when telling our own story of personal experience, judgment, and decision.

A man may not have actual excellence in his values, feelings, judgment, and reason, but when we listen, we should give him the respect due every man for the story he tells.  He has made choices at the moment, and he deserves for his story to be heard, understood, and given serious consideration.  As a listener it is our job to understand how he could have justified his action.  Until we have successfully completed this step, we have not earned the right to confront his judgment.  

Giving this open and receptive acknowledgment of another person is a type of “respect”, and is integral to the information gathering, rapport and trust building phase of the interaction.  All men are proud and want acknowledgment for their creations, and believe on some level that their action was right.  And, even if it was wrong, and they knew it was wrong, each man has a story that describes the compelling set of circumstances that justified the choice to engage in the transgression.  

All men deserve to have their story heard.  Each man has a complex of reason and emotion that has lead him to action, and we must give him the respect of listening to his story and reason.  Listening in this manner establishes trust, affinity, and the bond of fellow travelers down life’s path.  Every man has a unique internal guide that must be seen, heard, felt, and known.  Giving the time and attention necessary to understand a man’s motivation allows the confronter to fully grasp the forces operating in a man’s life, and disarms the violator.  He no longer needs to hold his justification alone.  He can release his shield, knowing that another can raise it.

We all have forces that act upon us, and in their own unique way integrate together to produce the desire, will, and drive to engage in action.  But, ultimately the distilled points of life we choose to guide our decisions are incomplete, and probably improperly weighted.  Thus, our choice of action will probably be sub-optimal.  None of us can claim the inerrancy of Godly perception, evaluation, choice, and Right action.  Thus, part of the respect we give to another man is out of humility.  In listening to another man’s story with empathy for his plight, I acknowledge my own state as a sinner, my imperfection of judgment and valuations, and my limitations of perception.  I am likewise following the script of my inner drama, marching to the beat of a drummer heard by me alone, and computing according to the experiments and research of my private internal scientist and logician.  

No one always has the definitive eternal Truth for every moment.  But, we all have a concept of the Truth each moment, and we should speak it when appropriate.  We should all pursue knowing the truth, finding that hidden treasure, and speaking and acting it to the best of our ability.  The other person’s conviction of his truth should not leave us mute and afraid of treading on his sacred reason and feeling-rationalization of action.  Each man’s reason-feeling complex deserves as much challenge and examination as my own.  As such, I am under an obligation to convince him of my truth, as much as he is under obligation to convince me of his.  

At this point we have arrived at the place where we may begin the process of confrontation.  We have paid our dues to pride, humility, trust, common reality, values, and truth.  We may therefore proceed with confrontation, knowing that our commitment is to spreading the truth of God’s way (knowing we may misjudge the path), and knowing we have satisfied the requirement of relationship of honoring another’s story/perspective in the same way we would desire our story to be heard.

Thus, the meaning and character of the word “respect” changes after we hear his story.  If the reasoning corresponds with our values and processing rules, we give respect in the conventional manner by giving praise and admiration for a job well done.  But, if we see flaws of value or judgment, then we must give him an alternative and unconventional type of respect, where we acknowledge his defenses and reasons for adopting what we believe is erroneous thinking, feeling, and values.  But, our disapproval will have little effect until he is convinced inside himself that his way is right and good.  Thus, if we are to penetrate that barrier of defense, enroll a man in a new habit of thought and feeling,


The pattern of relationship between husband and wives is applicable to the confronter and confronted.  (Ephesians 5:33  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.)  This is the pattern of relationship that produces harmony and cooperation.  

The love of the wife by the husband is not to be conditional, just as the respect of the husband by the wife.  But, having said that love and respect are not conditional, it must be recognized that the type of love and respect will change if the husband is behaving in a
way that is truly not respectable, and the wife is behaving in a way that is truly not lovely.  Thus, a man may not act however he wishes, and expect the same type of respect for his actions.  If he is addicted, abusive, adulterous, or abandoning, then she may have biblical grounds for divorce.  If he is not meeting her needs on an emotional, conversational, relational, financial, and/or sexual level, then the respect that a woman gives to a man must be a creative act rather than an act of giving acknowledgment of his excellence in performance.  Her respect should have within it the expectation that the husband is committed to right thought, speech, and action and operating from the highest and most Godly values.

When she speaks, it may be necessary to confront the errors of his behavior in a way that expresses respect for who he could be, who she expects him to be, and the standard that God expects.  When she listens, judges his actions, or attempts to discern his thoughts and motives, she should attempt to see any evidence of an underlying motivation which is honorable.  She should confront the errors of unGodliness she sees in him, but she should do it in a truly respectful way, taking ownership of her opinion, and doing the best she can to make it a Godly judgment.

Respect should be demonstrated in every situation of life.  If his performance is truly good, then she should give him the overt respect due excellence.  If his performance is poor, then she should sincerely consider the factors behind a man’s behavior before responding with judgment, correction, and confrontation.  Do not be quick to wrath, speak the truth in love, and dwell on whatever is positive and good.  

Some men may in fact be going against the rules of Godliness, and doing so purposefully.  Others may be deluded about the rules of Godliness, and others may know righteousness, but be unable to act it out because they are driven by subconscious programs, or extreme passions that tempt them.  

Every man begins his decision making process by assigning values to the cost and benefit of the various behaviors.  He continues by integrating the cost and benefit sum over the the short and long term.  And, he also factors in the probability of actually collecting the benefit or paying the cost.  Each man has his own: 1) set of data he uses in considering the possible outcome, 2) value system he uses to judge the value of outcome as a cost or benefit, and 3) the logic that gives him a sense of  truth.  

In other words, people do, speak, and think the best they can in every situation, and we should respect them for that level of performance.  The pragmatic man lives by the highest values he can afford to embrace considering the restrictions of his life.

In counseling and interpersonal relationships, we shall define confrontation as the process of comparing a troublesome thought, speech, or behavior with another standard (outside the person).  The goal of such a confrontation is to reach a place where the counselee, spouse, mate, child, employee, friend, or opponent is actually convinced inside his own heart that he is wrong, and should change his thought, speech or actions.  

The word “confrontation” implies that the confronted person is “wrong”, and the  confronting person is “right”.  And, in fact this is the only reason for confrontation, to engage in enrolling another person in self correction to right behavior.  But, the feeling of conviction in the confronter that he is right, does not make him right since God is the final and true judge of Truth.  

Thus, speaking from a position of humility, and implying that the confrontation could be wrong, the confronter should begin the confrontation by taking a posture of ownership of the concepts.  The confrontation should use phrasing which implies a tentative declaration of truth.  And, the confronter should ask the confronted person about if he understood the concept, if he agreed with it, and if not what was the point of disagreement.

Up until this point we have considered only the tentative confrontation of the counselor and friend, but there is an entire domain of confrontation which we shall call “hard confrontation.  This is commonly used in asymmetrical relationships such as parent-child, boss-employee, officer-enlisted, master-slave, and counselor-addict.  Hard confrontation is appropriate when the subordinate must simply follow the directive of the superior.  These times can be structural (such as the officer-enlisted, warden-prisoner, captain-passenger...), or circumstantial such as in the friend-friend, counselor-counselee relationship where there is gross violation, and the behavior must be changed.

A type of hard confrontation called “intervention” is typically done with a group of people who are close to the person, and affected by his behavior.  Intervention is meant to provide the weight of evidence provided by numbers, affinity, and personal experience.  An intervention has the purpose of shocking a person out of his state of self justification that allows him to continue on addictive or abusive behaviors.  Such approaches depend upon reaching the addict/abuser by showing him clear evidence of the harm done to his victims.  The testimony of those with factual knowledge of his behavior, may be able to penetrate a man’s wall of denial, and touch his heart to ignite a spark of compassion for his victims.

The ultimate hard confrontation is “incarceration”.  When family, friends, or society physically restrain a man from action, an external moral code is being imposed upon him without his consent.  Incarceration should continue until the man has changed his heart, made a recognition of his error, and demonstrated his changed habit, (i.e. new neural patterns due to practiced action of  new and right thought, speech, and action).  This is not the common practice of the current legal system.  To incarcerate for a period of time, without attempting to enroll the offender in new behavior, provides for an element of the principle of justice.  But, without penitence, personal inner transformation, and a commitment to right behavior, changed behavior is erratic and unpredictable.  Thus, a society which wishes to change the hearts of those it incarcerates should provide a program of confrontation (rational, empathic, and empirical), whose goal is enrolling the offender in new values, and the associated thoughts, speech, and actions.  But, to do so requires that society adopt a generally recognized standard of right behavior.  As a Judeo-Christian culture we once had a loose assembly of values and ethics that could be used as standards for judging right behavior.  But in the post modern world, with its religion of Secular Humanism guiding society, we see a societal reluctance to embrace standards of Truth.  In order to honor the Golden Calf of relativism and individual truth, we have retreated to the lowest common denominators of justice and declared that by spending time in prison, deprived of free movement, the criminal has paid his debt to society.  But, the higher debt to God, and the ongoing transaction of righteous society has not been paid or served.  Only by a change of heart is the man freed of his bondage to evil.  Unless society has a standard it wishes to impose or direct the criminal toward, the period of incarceration will produce no other effect than give a nod to the principle of justice.  But, the justice is inadequate that only deprives freedom in exchange for the violation against a man’s neighbor.  Only true repentance, and compensation of the victim in kind, can tip the scales of justice toward balance, fairness, and actual equity.  In fact, all gestures at compensation can never restore the identical condition prior to offense.  Thus, the violated person must fill in the gap between past and present with grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

In the arena of offense that does not rise to the level of criminality, hard confrontation is appropriate when the confronter recognizes an important, time sensitive, high consequence truth being missed, denied, or resisted.  The confronted person can be approached with strong personal force by strong declarations.  The validation and authority of that declaration may come from the evidence of success in a man’s life, or it may come from reason and experimental evidence.  

But, often in interpersonal interactions, the declarations of truth are made in the absence of expertise, objectivity, and evidence.  Instead, they are made from the point of view of opinion and personal programming and emotional reaction.  Its is exactly these types of programs and expressions that produce the peer-peer power struggles and estrangement of affection and relationship.  The individual perspective, the desire for power, the pride of being right, the pain of dissimilarity, all contribute to the individual using hard confrontation without any enrollment, rapport, or pacing.  This type of reaction should be avoided, and is the topic that we are examining in this issue of Confrontation and Judgment.  

This type of hard confrontation should be used sparingly in peer-peer relationships, lest they become habitually asymmetrical by their repetition.  When doing hard confrontation, the speaker is making a declaration of truth, but the confronter should make a disclosure of his level of certainty.  Hard confrontation is by its very nature placing the confronter in a superior role such as teacher, priest, governor, master, and/or parent, and the confronted person in a corresponding subordinate role.  And, the success of the confrontation depends in part upon the confronted person actually accepting this subordinate position.  And, since every man has absolute control over his will, even the most factually accurate, and heart-centered hard confrontation can fail.  The man being confronted can harden his heart and distort reality to validate and maintain a perspective.

Returning to the more mundane considerations of confrontation in everyday relationships, when we confront another about his violation of space, protocol, and personal taste, we feel justified in confronting because it was was wrong, and/or it hurt.  In general we are convinced of the accuracy of our perspective and feel justified in making the confrontation, and demanding change.  And, from a divine perspective, there may truly be a right perspective and wrong action that should be confronted and changed.  But, regardless of the absolute truth of the violation and its resolution, the person being confronted may not be fully convinced of Truth unless he is brought along the gradient of data and its interpretation.  The process of convincing a man involves identifying the relevant objects and players, the movement and force of each, and the sequence of interactions that resulted in their ultimate effect.  

To engage in such a process of argument to convince another man to adopt the reality of the a perspective, and enlist the desire to change, will usually require time, effort, and repetition.  This entire process is called confrontation, and at its center is the confrontation of wrong behavior with right behavior.  The confrontation can be successful simply because the facts are accurate and the standard of judgment is true.  But, success in enrolling the mind and heart of another to accept the need to change usually requires repeating many cycles of rapport, confrontation, and change, with each cycle producing an additional increment of resolve and actual transformation.  

The process of enrolling another in accepting the need for change should be done with love and respect.  Simplistically, Love is caring for the well being of the other, and Respect is a sincere compassion and understanding of the other’s weakness and humanity.  The foundation of all confrontation is rapport, and this is best developed by truly knowing and understanding the internal and external forces that produce the behavior.  Share, understand, and work together to identify the problem.  Confrontation should be a collaborative process of identifying wrong behavior, with the goal of producing a desire to change the erroneous thought, speech, and action.