Confronting

Confrontation is giving a report on another person’s behavior, offering feedback on the other’s role or response, providing a second person’s perspective on one’s way of being, acting or relating. Its goal, in a counseling setting, is to bring the counselee face to face with avoided aspects of behavior or emotional life. In everyday life it less ambitiously seeks to offer an alternative experience of the person’s self-presentation or actions. We shall look at (1) confrontation in biblical and theological perspectives, (2) methodology for effective confronting and (3) desired outcomes.

Confrontation in Biblical and Theological Perspectives

The Pauline letters describe the blend of confrontation and caring necessary in effective communication. The most cited passages are Ephes. 4:15, “Let us speak the truth in love; so shall we fully grow up into Christ” (NEB), and 1 Cor. 13:5, “Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth” (NEB). For Paul the balance and unity of love and truth are essential to wholeness in both personhood and community. Truth (confrontation) and love (support) should not be divided. The Gospel of John sees this balance as a central element in the self-presentation of Jesus: “So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory . . . full of grace and truth. . . . Out of his full store we have all received grace upon grace; for while the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:14, 16-17 NEB).

Throughout the Scriptures the balance of support and judgment is visible in the prophets such as Jeremiah (the weeping prophet), whose confrontation is legendary, or Micah, who links doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly (Micah 6:8). Jesus, in the prophetic tradition, is moved by both compassion (Matthew 9:36) and anger (Mark 3:5) to be caring to the offender and offended (John 8:1-12) as well as confrontative to the blind (Matthew 23:1-39). The commitment to be both prophetic and priestly, just and loving, shapes a biblical theology. A context of caring must come before confrontation; a sense of support must be present before criticism; empathy must precede evaluation; trust is needed before risk; understanding opens the way to disagreeing; affirmation undergirds assertiveness; love enables us to level with each other.

Methods for Effective Confronting

A person’s ability to offer the necessary amount of information about his or her part in a relationship with no unnecessary threat to that relationship—the maximum data with the minimum threat—is a skill to be learned. Effective confrontation is invitation: it invites another to consider change but does not demand it. It is not diplomacy, tact or smoothness of tongue; it is simplicity in speech, empathy in attitude and honesty in response. General guidelines for confrontation follow.

Focus feedback not on the actor but on the action. Comment not on the person but on the behavior in question. To criticize the person stimulates feelings of rejection; to critique the behavior can affirm the other’s freedom to change and offer options for future situations.

Focus feedback not on your conclusions but on observations. Comment not on what you think, imagine, hunch or infer but on what you have actually seen or heard. Statements of inference, whether conclusions or rumors, can be made by anyone at any time without any personal experience. But statements of observation, firsthand reporting, must be limited to what one has seen and can be made, obviously, by only the observer. Restricting oneself to personal knowledge grounds the feedback in a more mutual reality and opens potential understanding between giver and receiver. Focus the feedback not on judgments but on descriptions.

Focus feedback not on quality but on quantity. Comment on the amount of feeling expressed, not the kind; on the degree of action taken, not the evaluative labels; on the extent of the behavior, not the categories or cubbyholes you might use to name it. Use adverbs that tell how much rather than adjectives that tell what kind; use terms denoting more-or-less rather than either-or, which says, “Case closed!”

Focus feedback not on advice and answers but on ideas, information and alternatives. Offer data, enrich with options, and open further possibilities, rather than narrowing the right way down to a single choice and offering advice on which direction should be taken.

Focus feedback not on the amount available in you the giver but on the amount that is useful to the receiver. Do not vent; contribute. Do not overload the emotional circuits or overtax the other’s ability to listen and absorb.

Focus feedback not on the time, place, schedule or needs you feel but on the best time and the optimal situation for the receiver. You are not confronting for your own benefit, release or discharging of emotion. Your goal is focused on the interests of the other and of the enduring relationship.

The focus, when placed on the action, on observations, on description, on quantity, on information, on alternatives, on the amount useful and on the best time and place, will invite both parties in the conversation to meet each other with the best degree of understanding possible in an anxiety-prone communication.

Desired Outcomes

The goal is to deepen understanding by increasing the shared information base, to move behavior that is largely unconscious into consciousness, to bring what was in the blind zone into the open arena for conversation. When this is accomplished well, the risk taken deepens the trust, and the dialogue achieved grounds the relationship in actual, honest, lived experience. As this is practiced gently, caringly, constructively and acceptingly it enriches community.

» See also: Accountability, Relational

» See also: Church Discipline

» See also: Conflict Resolution

» See also: Justice

» See also: Listening

» See also: Love

» See also: Speaking

References and Resources

D. Augsburger, Caring Enough to Confront (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1973); J. Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? (Los Angeles: Argus Books, 1969).

—David Augsburger