There is a fire that rises in defence of what is sacred. The prophets had it. Christ in the temple, the cords in his hand, the tables going over.
It is not anger. Anger wants the offence undone. This other fire wants the thing held — wants what is true kept from being made smaller than it is. The fire is real.
But something else stands beside it. Close enough, in the heat, to be mistaken for it. The fire defends what is sacred. The thing beside it defends the self that is seen defending what is sacred. They speak in the same words. They make the same sentences. Set them side by side and you cannot tell which is which.
Error can and should be corrected because the error wounds something real, but there is a version of it that corrects because the work of correction puts the one doing it a head above the one being corrected. The words match. The conviction sounds the same.
You can watch for it in others, a little. You cannot reliably watch for it in yourself, because the part that would do the watching is the same part under suspicion. It is good at this. It will agree that zeal can curdle, nod gravely at the danger, and take the nodding as further proof of its own soundness. It accepts correction as one more thing to be admired for accepting.
There is no burning clean. Only the suspicion held quietly — that whenever something rises in me for what is holy, something else may be warming itself at the same flame.
Both fires. Both real. The question asked again, each time.