Watch that Zeal!

Zeal is defined as - “great enthusiam or eagerness” (Cambridge English Dictionary) Zeal about something is good.
The LORD himself is very zealous (as Isaiah 59:17 clearly shows – “ . . . clad with zeal as a cloak”). But zeal can be completely misplaced.In other words, just because someone is keen or zealous about something, that doesn’t make the thing they are zealous about a good thing. For example, the young Muslim university student who strapped some dynamite around her waist a while ago and then blew herself and a bunch of Israelis having coffee in a side-walk café to smithereens, was certainly zealous, but her zeal doesn’t make right the thing that she did. It may have been right for her to do that, and that is another issue, but her zeal itself didn’t make it a right thing for her to have done.Saul of Tarsus (before he became Paul the apostle) was zealous about killing or imprisoning the Lord Jesus’ followers (“concerning zeal, persecuting the church” - Phil. 3:6), but that zeal was misplaced - to say the least! Paul later wrote about Israel’s zeal in rejecting the Nazarene as their Messiah (“..they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” Romans 10:2). And that zeal was misplaced in the extreme!When the Lord Jesus whipped the money-changers and chucked their tables over (just imagine the scene!) he was certainly zealous, but the important thing was that his zeal was not just present, but it was well-placed zeal (“the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up” – Jn. 2:17).So just because you are really keen on some issue, you need to be sure that the issue is itself true and correct and that your zeal is therefore well-placed.Millions of individuals are very zealous about their particular cause, but their causes are wrong and actually evil. Ante Pavelich, the Roman Catholic head of state in Yugoslavia during the war, was very zealous when he filled a basket with the eyeballs of non-Catholic Serbians who refused to convert to Romanism, and kept it on his desk for a war correspondent to report on (* see additional info in footnote).Nothing is more harmful than zeal for a bad thing.Zeal for a good thing is excellent .Get that, and get it good, and then apply it to yourself and the things that you are zealous about in your life.But how do you KNOW that what you or anybody else is zealous about is a good thing?THAT is, of course, the question!Is there some authority around that I can consult and find out whether my zeal for my particular cause is well-placed or mis-placed? Is there someone or some group or body of people that will tell me that all important answer?Now the Christian says, “Oh, that’s easy, I just go to the BIBLE”.And the Muslim says, “Oh that’s easy, I just go to the Koran”.And Mormon says “Oh that’s easy, I just go the Book of Mormon”.And the atheist and rationalist says “Oh that’s easy, I go by my reason”.And the Roman Catholic says “Oh that’s easy, I just go by my Church and the Pope, he has a direct link to God and he tells me exactly what is a good thing and what is not a good thing.”How do YOU know that what you are zealous about is a good thing? ooOOoo
Footnote:-* An American Intelligence report leaked to the public states that Ante Pavelich, Head of State in Yugoslavia, was allowed to escape because “Pavelich’s contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican that any extradition of Pavelich would deal a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church” - U.S. Counter Intelligence Report Sept. 12, 1947.