I Shouted At Somebody About A Rule

It lasted about eleven seconds.

He said something. Not insolent. He questioned a rule, in the way people do, half joking, in front of four other people.

And your voice went up.

Not shouting in the sense of a man out of control. Loud. Sharp. And you said something about how it is not up for discussion, and there was a silence, and then everybody went back to work.

You have thought about it every day for a week.

Not about the rule. About his face. There is a particular thing a face does when somebody it respects goes up at it, and you saw it, and you cannot get rid of it.

And here is the part that will not leave you alone.

The rule is not even yours. You do not like the rule. You would not have written it and you have told nobody that.

So a man who privately agrees with him raised his voice at him for questioning a thing that neither of them chose, and that makes no sense at all until you look at what was actually loaded.

There is a verse about the order of things and it puts the slowness in a specific place.

Slow to wrath

James gives three instructions in one line and the order of them is deliberate.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. (James 1:19, King James Version)

Swift to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to wrath.

Three things, in order, and each one is about pace rather than about content. Nothing in it says what to say. It is entirely about how fast.

You have been given an instruction about speed rather than about temper, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works in that gap. James 1:19 puts the slowness on the speaking and the wrath rather than on the feeling, and He has been present in eleven seconds of every day for a year.

Now the thing that will actually help, because it is about what was loaded.

Wrath that arrives in eleven seconds was already in the room before anybody spoke. Nobody generates that from a half joking remark. It was carried in.

What was carried in was a year of running a rule you do not agree with and never saying so, and a man in that condition is not slow to wrath about that rule, because the rule is a live wire in him.

You were not angry at him, and it is written to be slow to wrath rather than to have none. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man what was actually loaded, and James 1 is about the pace of what comes out rather than the existence of it.

And that is why swift to hear comes first in the verse.

The order is not decorative. Hearing is what tells a man which thing he is actually dealing with, and there was no hearing in those eleven seconds. There was a remark, and a wire, and a voice.

You have a first instruction that would have caught this, and the Holy Spirit is the one who slows a man down at the right end of a sentence. Scripture puts the hearing ahead of the speaking on purpose, and James 1:19 is where the order is given.

The apology and the explanation

Now the practical part, and there are two things and only one of them should be said.

You owe him an apology for the raised voice. That is plain. It was not proportionate, it happened in front of four people, and he did nothing wrong.

You do not owe him an explanation, and here is why that matters.

If you tell him it happened because you privately hate the rule, you have just handed a young man a grievance he did not have, and put your own weight on him, and made the apology about you.

You have one thing to say rather than two, and the written word puts the slowness on the speaking rather than making a man explain himself. The Spirit of God is the one who can tell an apology from a confession, and He is not asking for the second one here.

So the apology is short and it is about the voice and nothing else.

I was wrong to raise my voice at you on Tuesday. You asked a fair question.

That is the whole thing. No because. No context.

You are able to make it right in fourteen words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land as strength rather than as weakness. It is written to be slow to speak, which applies to the apology as much as to the anger, and James 1:19 is the shape of it.

And then, separately, there is the wire, and the wire is your business rather than his.

That is a thing to say out loud on your own, or to your wife, or to somebody who does not work for you. The rule is a live wire in you and it will go off again if nothing is done about it, and the doing is not his to be part of.

You have two separate matters rather than one, and Scripture puts the slowness on what leaves a man's mouth rather than on what is in him. The Spirit of God is the one who separates them, and He does it before the next Tuesday rather than after.

Find him in the back

So here is the thing to do, and it is today, and it is fourteen words.

Find him. Not in front of the four. In the back, or by a door, on his own.

Say: I was wrong to raise my voice at you on Tuesday. You asked a fair question.

Then stop, and let him say whatever he says, and go back to work.

You are handing over an apology rather than an explanation, and James 1:19 puts the slowness on the speaking on both sides of this. The Spirit of God is the one present for those fourteen words, and He is not embarrassed by them.

And separately, when you are on your own, say out loud that the rule is a wire in you.

That is not for him and it is not for anybody in that building. It is so that the next time somebody half jokes about it, there is a man in the room who knows what is loaded.

You have been carrying something unnamed that went off on the wrong person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who defuses it. It is written that the pace is what a man is asked for, and James 1:19 is where the whole order of it stands.

Then open in the morning and go on running the building the way you run it.