Virtually all persons have confrontations in their lives, and may be able to measure their progress to maturity toward which those confrontations play a part. Some of the confrontations are between persons, but I am thinking of events that may not seem to others as confrontations, but become so because of the effect they have on a life. Some would identify events included here as merely personal experiences. Very well, heightened experience is often self-confrontation. It may be modest, but achieves life change. It may be dramatic. It becomes indelible for us, especially when repeated in some later experience. For example, when I was a child of about five years of age, I was frightened by a large dog aggressively approaching from behind me in our yard. I fled. Some years later, though comforted by the owner that his dog would not bite me, I was severely bitten. Since that time I have an irresistible, defensive attitude toward dogs, even though they are my favorites among pets. I felt, and feel, confronted by any large dog.
Confrontations may be negative or affirmative in their context, and may appear opposite to their initiation in their results. I was about eleven years of age, sometimes bullied by the bigger and older toughs. One day, just before I was turning thirteen years of age, as we caddies chalked for the day, one registered his brothers, who would not arrive until much later. I erased the names. The signing brother threatened me, wrote the names again, and I erased them again. He hit me. I hit him back. We fought as hard as we could for fifteen minutes, and he quit. I went home that day walking on a cloud. No one bullied me again.
As an adult I was confronted by my best friend about a pattern of my life. I was so struck by his words that I made a commitment that day, and have stayed by it for more than seventy years. In the Bible, Adam and Eve were confronted by God; Nabal by his wife; Moses by his father-in-law, Jethro; David by Abigail; the disciples by Jesus; Paul and Barnabas by each other; and, so the long list might be recited. Some results were affirmative, and some were negative. Some mixed, but many became important. They are reported.
We encounter what might be called confrontations – life changing in some way. Key to their value is the ability to receive them and weave them into one’s life for good – for conformation and/or change. Some persons miss these rockets that may catapult them forward, or backward, to better life, or retreat, perhaps to fear or ill will. Likely even mild negative response prevents them from moving forward. My counseling has included a number of persons who won or lost on a single dramatic event, perhaps several related events, in their lives. It has made significant impact on students who find testing, evaluations, foreign ideas or influences, either too stressful to face, or too challenging for achievement. They may drop out.
All persons ought to have included in their orientation for life, that they will face experiences identified here as confrontations demanding response. They need to recognize them, defuse them with care, but learn from them, and be improved by them. The confrontations of competitions, of persons who dislike us, or friends who care, become significant. Then there are the accidents, temptations, terror moments, health threats, job loss, chance events, death of a loved one, break-up of marriage or family, and the like. The best of these moments of life change, of greatest value, come from self-confrontation, and God’s good confrontation molded to our lives, primarily from Scripture. Such persons can form life in redemptive confrontation. Those served best in this matter are those who look for challenge, challenge to better processes, better attitudes, better conducts and all that in a peaceful environment that removes threat from our lives. We discover we are no longer afraid. Threat is gone, growth, maturity and pleasure to self takes hold. There is some mystery in all this. We do well not to waste time in juggling mystery. We do well in using the processes of daily life to become what we really want to be. We do well when we begin with a deliberate life changing confrontation with Jesus Christ. In that we interpret all the other challenges as confrontations toward victorious life, and self-control. Life is God’s gift to mankind from his love nature. It doesn’t go well without his aid in following his course to gain his promises. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020