If Nathan hadn’t held the reins of the interchange so firmly, David would have found a way to derail the interchange, out of an intuitive fear of what was coming. And then Nathan’s visit would have accomplished no good at all.

But equally, if Nathan hadn’t permitted David those two choices, David would not have had to accept the judgment as his own, and himself as being condemned by his own knowledge of what God reveals to be right and wrong. David would just have rejected the judgment as Nathan’s opinion.

This art of choreographing the interaction, controlling it just enough, and giving the person being confronted just the right decision points, is what makes for successful witness. I won’t claim that great witnesses sit down and diagram out what they’re going to do…. But they can feel their way to their goal because they know in their gut what works.

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Friends, I want to make it clear that cheap feelings of moral superiority are not the point of this exercise.

…There seems to have been a particular incident that crystallized the transformation. That is what I want to talk about now.

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…This approach to justice gave every member of the community a strong reason to live a life of integrity — so that, if he or she ever found herself in court, perhaps accused wrongly of some crime, her testimony would be respected. There was a real incentive in this system to become the sort of person who could speak as a witness and be believed.

And what is maybe equally significant, this system also trained every member of the community to be alert for the sound and the signs of integrity, in the voices and actions of people around her or him.

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