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From experience I will suggest that zeal causes discomfort until we put our hand to the plow. Once we embark on the task God calls us to, we are at peace. But we are human . We will still have hurt feelings, bruised pride etc.. These are part of our journey to perfection. As we grow in likeness to God, we will suffer these troubles less and less.That we all may be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect!

In peace,

Im, this is probably a discussion that should be had in a separate thread as its strays far from the original purpose of this thread. And I am ever mindful of that unseen hand that oversees all of our discussions

(I do however want to make one point -- the term translated as "mortal" in the verses you quoted is not universally translated that way and most scholars do not interpret this passage as supporting the later scholastic division between mortal and venial sins.)

This thought strikes me. Evil is disturbing to the soul and that evil is not always within one's own soul. The prophets come to mind.

Part of our duty to each other and to "the world," is to say, "That's evil--can't go there, can't do that." That will disturb the souls of the wicked so that they can repent and turn to God and give peace to our own souls for not having abondoned the good out of fear. This is making judgments, but it is not being "judgmental" which is in the modern world the greatest of all sins; but it is because the world confuses judgmentalism with making judgments.

I always have a healthy fear of the experts!

Since the "experts" today helped my wife deal with a very difficult and potentially life-threatening illness, I actually have a healthy respect for them today!

Praised be God for your wife's good health and men in science who use their knowledge for good! Would that all the experts were all so interested in using God's gifts for the good of mankind. But I fear all is not so well.

The intelligentsia and experts in the law, driven by the academic experts, have given us private executions of unborn babies, euthanasia and are now working on unnatural marriage-- soul troubling issues which should stir our souls to take action.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

I was thinking about this: there are times when we certainly ought to act, and that action seems like it would be fueled by anger, because the stimulus was the sort of thing that ought to make people angry. (Zeal just doesn't seem strong enough to use here)

And thinking that the opposite, not allowing anger to disturb our souls, would mean that the person wouldn't act in a situation where he ought to act...

And I realized that the times I have actually been in a situation like that, what happened was the my emotions kind of froze, so that I was doing what needed to be done, but my actions were not fueled by anger or any emotion, but by the necessity for right to be done (which might be called zeal).

The odd thing is that when I have imagined myself in a situation like that, I tended to feel a righteous emotion... which generally tended to be a sort of puffing-up of myself (so I don't imagine things like that anymore!) So, I'm wondering if I might not have been assuming that Christ felt as I imagined I would feel.

(This is all very interesting, because I have never thought about it this way. Reading what the Fathers said about this challenged me to re-think my position.)

(Which is a bit of a bummer as my temper is definitely a weak point for me )

Here's an addendum to the original Scripture passage.

Was Jesus "angry" when he cursed the fig tree to wither for not producing fruit out of season?

I've heard a Muslim scholar polemically debate that Jesus had to be non-divine, since 'what kind of Divine being would curse a tree for doing what it is supposed to do - that is fruit in the summer and not fruit in the winter?'