It sure seems like there are a lot of people in the world who are wrong. They have the wrong politics. They have the wrong view of God. They have the wrong picture of what is most important in life and the wrong lifestyle as a consequence.

In light of this, it also seems like I should point out to these people that they are wrong. At least, it is very tempting to think that this is what I should do. The default mode of our culture is to respond to the errors in others by trying to tear them down. The internet makes it especially easy to find targets to confront and platforms from which to confront them. And the confrontation feels noble. To oppose error is to stand for truth. It is to bring light to those who may fall for the error. Refuting the wrong I see around me is a public service.

It is especially easy to think this way when I look at two of my heroes: Jesus and Socrates. Both men were famously confrontational. Socrates was well known for pointing out to people that they lacked wisdom; Jesus showed the ways people were not following God. Both men were so confrontational that they were killed by those whom they confronted. And in their deaths, both men displayed the nobleness of their causes. They were willing to die at the hands of people who were in the wrong rather than give in, stop confronting, and let the wrongness remain. Perhaps I, too, should take such a stand for truth and make confronting error my goal.

In this essay, I will argue that this is not the primary lesson I should glean from Socrates and Jesus. (And not just because I would prefer to remain unmartyred.) At times I may be called to take a public stand for the truth, and at times it may be necessary to call out the error espoused by someone else. But when it comes to my lifestyle, to my general attitude towards people in the world, the lesson of my heroes is not to make confronting others a central pillar. Rather, both Jesus and Socrates are exhorting me to confront myself.

I will begin by looking at Socrates. First, I should clarify that while Socrates was a real person, the heroic Socrates, the one I admire, is the literary Socrates depicted in the dialogues of Plato. In these dialogues, Socrates goes around conversing with people, and in the course of these conversations he shows that the people he is talking to don’t know what they are talking about. For example, in the dialogue Meno, Socrates shows that Meno cannot say what “virtue” is. In Charmides, he displays the ignorance of both Charmides and Critias when it comes to the nature of self-control.

Socrates initiates these conversations because he sees them as a mission from his god. (He thinks of this god as singular and moral, in stark contrast to the Greek gods, so it is possible to see him as following the biblical God in a way uninformed by revelation. For the purposes of exploring whether I should imitate Socrates, I will consider him as doing so.) An oracle of the god started him on this path of confrontation, and it is a path he follows out of obedience.

So even now I continue this investigation as the god bade me—and I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise. (Apology 23b)[1]

Why would the god care that some people are ignorant? He cares because they are not merely lacking a knowledge of facts—they are lacking a knowledge of what is most important in life. They lack wisdom. In the Meno and Charmides examples above, one person is ignorant about virtue, while the other two do not know the particular virtue of self-control. In other dialogues, Socrates shows people to be ignorant concerning additional virtues: justice, courage, piety. And if people do not know what virtue is, they may be living for other things, for the wrong things. Socrates’s confrontations are not merely about ignorance but about how people are living. He makes this clear when summarizing what he says to those he confronts:

Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul? (Apology 29d-e)

When he says these things, Socrates does not try to minimize the confrontation. He pokes and provokes, and these provocations are intentional. He is as irritating as a fly that bites.

I was attached to this city by the god—though it seems a ridiculous thing to say—as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company. (Apology 30e-31a)

Following God (assuming it is the biblical God), caring for virtue—these are good. Should I imitate Socrates and become a confronter? Before answering this question, let me point out one more feature of the dialogues: Plato depicts Socrates as a failure. He confronts people in order to get them to live better, but the people he talks to do not change their ways.

Take the examples I gave above. Meno, Critias, Charmides—these are not merely fictional characters but are all notoriously bad men from Athenian history. Plato’s original readers would have known the trajectories of their lives. When Socrates is done confronting them, they do not commit to virtue but instead go off and commit atrocities. Plato even emphasizes this at the end of Charmides. He has Charmides and Critias joke with each other about “submission,” “plotting,” and “force,” foreshadowing their future roles as tyrants. Socrates fails miserably.

Why would Plato write dialogues about Socrates that show him failing? A key part of the answer is to notice that with every dialogue there is a hidden participant. Socrates questions, his opponent answers, but there is always a third person: the reader. The speaking participants may be long-dead historical figures, but as I read the dialogues, I am very much alive. This means that I still have to decide how I am going to live my life. The mission of Socrates is still relevant to me.

Plato’s Socrates, however, cannot confront me directly. He is a static literary figure, one who gives an unchanging set of responses to the characters as Plato wrote them. He cannot confront me on the details and particulars of my life. This means that if I am going to be confronted about my own life in the way that Socrates wants, the confronting will have to be done by me. I can read about the ways that Socrates confronts others in the dialogues, but then I must turn and ask whether his questions apply to me as well. I can consider all the questions to be found in the dialogues, but then I need to expand them and ask whether there are additional ways in which I am caring for the wrong things in life.

When it comes down to it, even if Plato’s Socrates were a real person living now, and even if he were to talk to me directly, it would still be me who needs to confront myself. Even Socrates had to be a self-confronter:

I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing “myself” and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men…. (Apology 38a, emphasis added)

Socrates had to test himself because only then can change happen. The unexamined life is not worth living because in it I never ask myself if I am living for the right things—for morality, for God—and so I never change if I am not. The question is not whether my life has been externally evaluated by someone else, for as we all know, and as is illustrated in Plato’s dialogues, external criticism does not produce real change. It might produce behavioral conformity, but it will not alter the internal heart—what I care about and live for. In order for this latter change to happen, I must ask myself if I am centering my life on what is truly important. It is only when I am willing to do this questioning that I can also be willing to make the necessary change.

Socrates is admirable for emphasizing this examination, this confrontation. He is a worthy hero to emulate. But I must be careful when it comes to which aspects of his confronting I select for emulation. Socrates seeks out others to confront because he sees himself as being given this task by God; following God is admirable, but I do not think that God has given me this task, so admiring Socrates is not a reason for me to confront others. Plato’s Socrates is also a literary figure, with confrontations designed to stimulate the reader; I am not a literary figure, so I do not need to engage in confrontations as a literary device. Instead, as a reader and as a human being who must decide what my life will be about, I can look at Socrates’s confrontations and recognize the need to confront myself. If I find Socrates heroic, I should emulate him in my own life.

What about Jesus? He is not just a hero; he is my savior. And he confronts people in even more extreme ways than Socrates. He overturns tables. He calls Pharisees whitewashed tombs. He tells a crowd they are of their father the devil. He draws the attention of the woman at the well to how many men she has been with. But he does all of this confronting for the best possible motives—he is the only human who has ever lived perfectly. Perhaps, then, I should be confrontational like Jesus.

As with Socrates, I will suggest that this is not the lesson I should draw from Jesus. In this case, however, it matters that the writings in which we learn about Jesus—the Gospels—are history, not fiction. They describe the real interactions of the real person Jesus.

And this real Jesus is the most important person who ever lived. There are many reasons for why this is the case, but I will point here to one that Jesus himself highlights: The way a person reacts to Jesus is the way a person reacts to God. If I honor one, I honor the other.

For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. (John 5:22-23)[2]

If I believe one, I will believe the other.

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. (John 5:37-38)

A person’s reactions to Jesus are the same as his or her reactions to God. Because of this, Jesus cannot help but confront people. His very being is confrontational. For every person on the planet, the most important question we have to face is whether or not we will follow God. And the natural answer for every person on the planet, given that we are all sinners, is that we would prefer not to. Thus, just by showing up, Jesus is confronting people with the most fundamental question they have to ask, one to which they by nature answer wrongly.

This is why, in the example above, Jesus tells a crowd they are of their father the devil. He is making a criticism, but it is also, in part, simply an observation, given how they are relating to him.

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. …” (John 8:42-44)

Since Jesus confronts by his very existence, I must not simply copy his mode of confrontation. I am not the Son of God. There may be times when people are offended by me because I am a Christian, and in those times I may need to be confrontational in order to uphold the truth. But the vast majority of the time when someone has a problem with me, it is simply because I have problems. My sin and their sin clash, and we have a mess, not a case where I need to confront the other person. In these times, I need to remember a primary command of Jesus regarding confronting others: I should remove any logs in my own eyes before trying to remove their specks.

Like Socrates, Jesus confronts others in a way that does not suggest I should do the same. But also as with Socrates, I should learn from watching Jesus confront others that I need to confront myself. In this case, I need to force myself to answer the question “Am I going to reject Jesus, as do so many of the people whom he confronts, or am I going to follow him?”

Sometimes when Jesus confronts a person, he is posing this question to them. This appears to be the case with the woman at the well mentioned earlier. Notice her response to being confronted about her living situation. She does not take it as an insult, but she inquires more deeply into who Jesus is.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. …” (John 4:16-19)

By the end of the conversation, she is running off to town and proclaiming to people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29). Jesus confronts her with who he is, and by all appearances she is on her way to following him.

Jesus cannot confront me in exactly the same way. He is not here in human form to confront me directly. So, when I read about him confronting others, I need to turn around and confront myself with who he is as well. In saying this, I do not mean to ignore the role of the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, I will not turn to Jesus. However, being given the Spirit is up to the mercy of God and is outside my control. When it comes to what I can and should do, the answer is to confront myself with who Jesus is.

Confronting others may be necessary at times, but in our society there is so much of it. My project here has been to examine two of my heroes whose actions could be taken as support for fanning the flames of confrontation. I suggest that they should not be understood as giving me reasons to confront others. Rather, they would encourage me to turn my gaze inward and confront myself. There is a lot of error in the world, but some of the wrong is in myself. To honor the examples of Jesus and Socrates, this is the wrong I should confront.

Notes

1 All quotes about Socrates are from Plato, Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube, 2nd ed., rev. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002).
2 Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Colloquy, Gutenberg College’s free quarterly newsletter. Subscribe here.