I had a roommate, and we had this thing with the thermostat. I’d set it where I wanted it. He’d walk by and bump it up. I’d walk by and bump it back down. He’d change it again. This went on for weeks. Neither of us said a word about it. It was a completely silent war. And finally, I did what any totally mature, spiritually grounded person would do.
I set a password on the thermostat. Just locked him out entirely. I won.
I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t proud of myself. I was very proud.
Nobody walks into a room in their own house and announces, “I am now going to control the temperature for everyone.” Sometimes you just do it. And when someone changes it back, and this may just be a male thing, but you feel this flash of irritation that is wildly out of proportion to the actual stakes. It’s degrees.
But you’re not really mad about degrees. You’re mad because somebody touched your thermostat. Somebody adjusted the environment you’d set up for yourself.
James asks in chapter 4, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?” And then he answers it: your passions are at war within you. You desire and do not have, so you fight and quarrel. That’s what’s happening in every conflict, just at a much deeper level. Somebody bumped your thermostat, and now you’re at war. Not because the room is too hot. Because you lost control. The quarrel in front of you is rarely just about what happened. It’s about what you’ve decided you must have.