The Road Less Traveled
    A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

The Risk of Confrontation

- Final risk, possibly greatest risk of love, is risk of exercising power with humility
    - Common exapmle: Act of loving confrontation
- Confrontation is easy for most people
    - To say, "I'm right, you're wrong" is easy
- For truly loving person, confrontation is difficult
    - To confront a loved one, you assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority
    - But sometimes one person does know better than another what is good for the other
    - Wiser of the two has the responsibility to confront the other
- Painstaking self-scrutiny
    - Lover examines stringently the worth of his or her "wisdom"
    - Examines motives behind this need to assume leadership
    - Am I being self-serving in belief that other person needs redirection?
- Two ways to confront:
    1) With instinctive and spontaneous certainty that one is right
    2) With belief that one is probably right, arrived at through scrupulous self-doubting and self-examination
- 2nd method is humility
    - Not common
    - Requires genuine extension of one's self
    - More likely to be successful
    - Never destructive
- To fail to confront, when confrontation required for nurturing spiritual growth, is failure to love equally

- Confrontation in marriage   
    - Love spouses must repeatedly confront each other is marriage is to serve as promoting the spiritual growth of both partners
    - No marriage can be truly successful unless spouses are each other's best critics
- Traditional concept that friendship should be conflict-free
    - Mutual exchange of favors and compliments
    - These friendships are superficial and intimacy-avoiding

- To confront or criticize is a form of exercising leadership or power
- When we confront, we want to change the course of that person's life
    - If we desire someone else's spiritual growth, then we need to concern ourselves with the most effective way to accomplish this in any given instance
    - And so must concern ourselves with confrontation
- To be heard
    - Must speak in a language the listener can understand
    - Speak on a level at which the listener is capable of operating

- Clear that exercising power with love requires work, but what about risk?
    - Potential for arrogance in exercising power
    - Risk is that we might end up "playing God"
- Exercising power without total self-awareness demanded by love
    - We are destructively ignorant of the fact that we are playing God
- We must play God, but with full consciousness of enormity of the fact that we are doing so
- Paradox: only out of humility of love can humans dare to be God

If we love someone, and are concerned with their spiritual growth, we must learn to confront them effectively.  We must do so with humility, and always question whether we are aiming for the other's best interests or whether we are being self-serving.