What Are You Guarding When You Snap?

A man settles on the couch for the game after a long week. His wife asks for help in the kitchen, and he snaps at her. It wasn’t a big request. So why the heat?

James asks the same question: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” The fight in the living room started inside him. He was guarding his comfort, and her request felt like an attack on it.

Anger often works like a security alarm. It goes off when something we are protecting is threatened. That makes it useful, if we stop and ask what it is guarding. Sometimes it is something good. Often it is just our own ease, our plans, our right to be left alone.

Paul points the other way: “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” The next time you snap at home, ask one question before you say anything else: what was I guarding just now?