"Confrontation" - A Discussion of Galatians 2:11-21

Here is the next outline in our Wednesdy study through Galatians...

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“Confrontation” Galatians 2:11-21

QUESTION: Have you ever had a time when you thought a “boss,” “leader” or even a “friend” in your life was making a serious error? What did you do? What was the outcome?



1. Everybody makes mistakes and errors in judgment. Galatians 2:11

A. Sometimes they are intentional; many times they are unintentional. Either way,the tradition of wearing costumes on halloween we still bear responsibility.

QUESTION: What examples can we think of each kind of error? How should we respond to such errors?

QUESTION: What is the difference between having different opinions, and having to confront an error?

• Even the best of us can be guilty at times for behaving in ways that are contrary to our stated beliefs.


• What might cause otherwise “good” people to act in troubling ways?

B. Some disagreements are from sin in the hearts of people. 2 Tim. 4:10,14; Phlp 1:15-18

This includes:

• The refusal to let go of anger and bitterness or to walk in grace, mercy and forgiveness. Eph 4:29-32


• When we fear losing our image, the respect of others, or the approval of certain friends in our life. Gal 2:12


• The refusal to submit earthly motivations and desires to the Lord. Philippians 2:1-5

C. Some disagreements occur because of misunderstandings. Acts 19:25-41

• This happens when we make assumptions about others, and/or hold on to past hurts & disappointments.


• This happens if we don't really listen to one another and/or whentop amazing halloween dog costumes in 2008 we walk in fear and mistrust instead of love.


• This happens when we allow ourselves to be swayed by gossip and slander. Proverbs 16:28

D. Some disagreements occur because we honestly see things differently than someone else. Acts 15:36-41

• Even the best of friends will run into times when they see things from opposing viewpoints.


• How we handle these moments is a test of our character and of our commitment to God and to one another.

E. As followers of Christ, we need to remember the need to lovingly lead people into truth instead of merely catering to false ways of thinking. What does this mean? Why might this be so?

2. One problem created when we err is that we can potentially lead others astray by our example. None of us are above being swayed by the missteps of others. Gal 2:13

QUESTION: How can we keep from being led into untruth, wrongful thinking, or wrongful action?



3. Once we understand the scope and impact of an error, it’s appropriate and right to address the issue. Gal 2:14-21

A. We should state the facts and the specifics as we understand them. Gal 2:14

B. We should give Biblical reasoning why we think this represents an error, sin, mistake, etc. Gal 2:15-21

C. We should carefully, attentively, and lovingly listen to the other person as well.

QUESTION: What does Paul believe is at stake here? What is the error that he addresses?

4. NOTE: Confrontation and conflict do not have to be synonymous.

A. Confrontation is the process by which we bring an issue into the open in order to produce healing and resolution. Acts. 15:39; Hebrews 10:24

• Disagreements and hurts should be lovingly confronted so that division doesn’t take root in our relationships.


• Loving confrontation will work to bring support as well as correction.


• The goal of confrontation is to come to mutual resolutions that help move all of us into the flow of God's will.


• When we simply sweep things under the rug, we add fuel to the fires of future conflict.

B. Conflict is the result of allowing confrontation to disintegrate into argument and polarization.

• Conflict focuses more on "winning" than on "loving."


• Conflict focuses more on "taking sides" or "getting even" than on exploring solutions & restoring relationship.

C. When we depend on the Spirit of Christ in us, we are enabled to walk in love at all times.

• A true brother or sister in Christ will tells us what we need to hear, not just what we want to hear. Pr 27:6


• A true brother or sister in Christ will respond with thanksgiving, even when the truth hurts.

D. When others simply will not come get your pets dressed up on halloweento a place of resolution, but persist in conflict, we must learn that setting appropriate boundaries may be a necessary and loving response. Romans 12:18, 2 Timothy 3:16-4:5

Q: When we become aware of our own errors, on our own or through confrontation, how should we respond?

Babies understand we can't always get what we want

Babies as young as ten-months are able to recognise the intent behind a failed action, thus revealing a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of other people's minds.

Amanda Brandone and Henry Wellman, who made the finding, used a methodological approach that regular readers of the Digest will be familiar with. This is the preferential looking time procedure, which exploits the fact that babies tend to look longer at something novel that grabs their interest.

One hundred and thirty-four babies in three age groups - eight, ten and twelve-months - were habituated to one of two versions of a video showing someone reaching for a ball. To say the babies were habituated to the video means they were shown it enough times that they grew bored.

One version showed a person reaching, with an arc-like movement, over a mini wall to pick up a ball. The key thing about this video was that it showed someone intending to make a direct reach for the ball.top amazing halloween dog costumes in 2008 The other version showed the same movement but the person failed to quite reach the ball - so the intent was the same, but they had failed.

Next the babies watched two further alternating videos: both were similar to the first they'd seen, but this time the wall wasn't there. In one, a person is seen reaching directly for the ball, with a straight, horizontal arm movement. In other words, his intent was to make a direct reach for the ball, just as in the earlier video. In the other, the person makes an arc-like reaching movement (similar to that seen earlier), even though no wall is in the way. So this person intended to make an indirect reach. 

The key question was - which of the later videos would most grab the babies' interest: the first one, which matched the intent in the earlier video (a direct reach for the ball), but was perceptually different, or the second video which was perceptually similar because of the arc-like movement, but which reflected a different intent (i.e. an indirect reach for the ball)?

The answer depended on which version of the first video the babies had seen.

When the first video showed someone successfully picking up the ball, all age groups subsequently spent more time looking at the later video showing an arc-like, indirect ball reach. This suggests that all the babies, from eight months and upwards, understood the intent behind the successful reach of the ball, and therefore found the later video showing an indirect reach far more interesting. (Yes, maybe they should get out more, but remember they're only little).

By contrast, among the babies who saw the initial video version with an unsuccessful ball reach, only the 10- and 12-month-olds subsequently spent longer watching the later video showing the indirect, arc-like ball grab. This suggests that homemade cow halloween costumesonly the older babies understood that the person in the first video was to trying to directly reach the ball, even though he'd failed. 

Taken altogether this research suggests that the ability of babies to understand the intent behind failed actions buildget your pets dressed up on halloweens on their earlier ability to understand the intent behind successful actions.

In the researchers' words: "...these data illustrate the early emergence of an intentional framework in at least one key instance of human action. Moreover, they show that this early intentional understanding of action appears later than, and potentially builds upon, a prior action- and object-based understanding."
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Amanda C. Brandone, Henry M. Wellman (2009). You Can't Always Get What You Want: Infants Understand Failed Goal-Directed Actions. Psychological Science, 20 (1), 85-91 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02246.x

Atlantis? No, it Atlant-isn't.

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

[Note: Last week we saw some interesting speculation that Atlantis had been found in Google Earth. As much as we'd love for that to be the case, there is a scientific explanation for the odd markings found on the seafloor. We've invited two of the scientists who gathered the data that appears in Google Earth to answer some questions that came up. - Ed.]

Since the launch of Ocean in Google Earth, millions of people have started to explore the ocean, and many have been surprised by their discoveries.

Near Hawaii you can see a new volcanic island in the making called the Loihi Seamount.


You can also clearly see the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean where two tectonic plates are moving away from one another. If you look closely, you can see this ridge connects with others around the globe, forming a nearly continuous mountain range that is over 60,000 kilometers long.


But so far nothing has sparked quite as much interest as this funny looking pattern off the west coast of Africa:


Patterns like this can actually be seen over much of the ocean floor in Google Earth. What is it? Is it real? Why does it look like this?

Some have speculated that these are the plow marks of seafloor farming by aliens. If there really are little green men hiding somewhere, the ocean's not a bad place to do it. Mars, Venus, the moon, and even some asteroids are mapped at far higher resolution than our own oceans (the global map of Mars is about 250 times as accurate as the global map of our own ocean).

One theory that's gained more traction is that these marks might be the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis. If that were the case, some of the city blocks would have to be over eight miles long - that's about fifty times the size of a city block in New York City (if you zoom in and use the measurement tool in Google Earth, you can do this comparison yourself).

So what is it? The scientific explanation is a bit less exotic, but we think it's still pretty interesting: these marks are what we call "ship tracks." You see, it's actually quite hard to measure the depth of the ocean. Sunlight, lasers, and other electromagnetic radiation can travel less than 100 feet below the surface, yet the typical depth in the ocean is more than two and a half miles. Sound waves are more effective. By measuring the time it takes for sound to travel from a ship to the sea floor and back, you can get an idea of how far away the sea floor is. Since this process — known as echosounding — only maps a strip of the sea floor under the ship, the maps it produces often show the path the ship took, hence the "ship tracks." Into be a pirate or not on this halloween this case, the soundings produced by a ship are also about 1% deeper than the data we have in surrounding areas — likely an error — making the tracks stand out more. You can see all of the soundings that produced this particular pattern with this KMZ file.


Echosounding with sonar is currently the best method for collecting this kind of data, but it's not perfect. One challenge is that it's quite slow. It has to be done from ships or underwater vehicles, and they can't go very fast or they'll spoil the measurement. As a result, not much of the ocean has been mapped this way, and huge gaps remain all over the ocean. In fact, the typical hole between tracks is about 20,000 square kilometers, or about the size of the state of New Jersey.

Now you're probably wondering where the rest of the depth data comes from if there are such big gaps from echosounding. We do our bestop amazing halloween dog costumes in 2008t to predict what the sea floor looks like based on what we can measure much more easily: the water surface. Above large underwater mountains (seamounts), the surface of the ocean is actually higher than in surrounding areas. These seamounts actually increase gravity in the area, which attracts more water and causes sea level to be slightly higher. The changes in water height are measurable using radar on satellites. This allows us to make a best guess as to what the rest of the sea floor looks like, but still at relatively low resolutions (the model predicts the ocean depth about once every 4000 meters). What you see in Google Earth is a combination of both this satellite-based model and real ship tracks from many research cruises (we first published this technique back in 1997). If you zoom in and take a look around the ocean for yourself, you can see higher resolution patches where ships have studied the sea floor and all the places we've still yet to explore. Here's a good example just homemade cow halloween costumesnorth of Hawaii:


So, what if we really wanted to find Atlantis? We probably couldn't do it with satellites — man-made structures simply aren't big enough to be measured that way. But we could map the whole ocean using ships. A published U.S. Navy study found that it would take about 200 ship-years, meaning we'd need one ship for 200 years, or 10 ships for 20 years, or 100 ships for two years. It costs about $25,000 per day to operate a ship with the right mapping capability, so 200 ship-years would cost nearly two billion dollars. That may seem like a lot of money, but it's not that far off from the price tag of, say, a new sports stadium.

For now, keep exploring the ocean in Google Earth, and continue to share what you discover. It's great to have so many sets of eyes looking at the data currently in Google Earth and asking questions about what it represents. We and our fellow oceanographers are constantly improving the resolution of our seafloor maps, so we promise to work with Google to keep the virtual explorers out there busy.

Posted by Walter Smith, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego