Why Emotionalism Doesn’t Lead to Spiritual Maturity

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiates: 3:1,4,8, NIV)

“Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in [union with] Him [reflecting His character in the things you do and say—living lives that lead others away from sin], having been deeply rooted [in Him] and now being continually built up in Him and [becoming increasingly more] established in your faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing in it with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception [pseudo-intellectual babble], according to the tradition [and musings] of mere men, following the elementary principles of this world, rather than following [the truth—the teachings of] Christ.” (Colossians 2: 6-8, AMP)

A pitfall of the American church is that it relies on carnal means to try and entice lost and worldly people into saving grace. The issue is, when we know real grace ourselves, we understand that there is nothing a person can say or do that can convince someone to sacrifice their worldly comforts to live a God-honoring life. Instead, we have to rely on God’s revealing Himself to someone in order to draw the lost to Him. 

And because we minimize that fact into a minor detail of church culture, Christians tend to strive in certain things in order to try and get imperfect people to see Jesus using imperfect means and methods.

Last week, we talked about how some churches use attractionalism, the idea that in order to make the church and Christ Himself palatable to an unbelieving world, we have to create an atmosphere in which the world would feel comfortable at church. It’s almost a bait and switch tactic, where you entice a non-believer in with trendy worship, hip community dressed in flashy clothes, and a comfortable, non-convicting, watered-down sermon to try and get them to accept Jesus. But what gets ignored is that in order to try and get worldly people to fill the seats, other spiritual disciplines such as discipleship, pastoring, and conviction that leads people to be more like Jesus, you have to remove the Gospel that convicts and transforms. These churches forfeit the call to go deeper into life-transformation all in the name of conforming to the world so people will walk through the doors of the church and fill the seats.

The thing is, when churches become attractional, they almost always lean into something else: emotionalism– the formation of ideology solely based on subjective feeling, rather than objective, Bible-based Truth. 

You’ve probably heard it before, because so many Christians use the same phrases: “I don’t feel called,” “I do feel called,” “I feel like the Lord is saying,” and the list goes on. In the modern church, every believer seems to feel one way or another, and yet, most don’t know for sure that what they feel is rooted in Truth. As a result, we have countless people believing that they know who Jesus is, never having read the full Bible, based solely off of the emotions they conjure in any given moment.

And yes, an encounter with the Lord– being in His presence and experiencing His love even for the merest of moments– is an addicting feeling because it is euphoric. To have had a taste of heaven and know what a moment feels like spent before God is incredible. So naturally, when we have encounters like that, it is our deep desire to be back there. The problem is, some churches will try to manufacture a service through the worship, prayer, sermon, and altar call that creates a high level of emotion and excitement to stir people up. And if someone believes they experienced God hyped up on the high emotions of the church experience, that will keep them coming back week after week chasing that same emotional high.

Charles Spurgeon says it best: “Then there are those whose religion must be sustained by enthusiastic surroundings. They seem to have been baptized in boiling water and unless the temperature around them is kept up to that point, they will wither away. The religion that is born of mere excitement will die when the excitement is over.”

The thing is, our emotions are not inherently evil. They are God-given and useful to us in many ways. The problem becomes when we base every spiritual decision, doctrine, and foundation of faith in what we feel. Why? Because our emotions are not fool-proof. They are subjective, relative, ever-changing, and can’t always be trusted. That’s why we need the Bible. We need some barometer that we can use to keep our unreliable emotions in check.

If we always go off of what we feel– if our entire foundation of faith is based in that– then we will inevitably be led in the wrong direction, away from that narrow path God has placed us on. Our emotions will not always lead us in the right direction. Cain’s anger led him to kill his brother. Jonah’s hatred of Assyrians and his fear of persecution led him to disobey God’s call to go to Ninevah. Peter, a man of many different emotions, had to be corrected by God on multiple occasions.

Our emotions will never convict us the way knowing Truth can. Our emotions will never challenge our sin the way the Bible will. And our emotions cannot be trusted as inerrant spiritual guides the way God revealed through scripture can. And if we allow our entire spiritual walk to be dictated by what we feel God is doing at any given moment– if we don’t know our Bible in its fullness, not just the parts that make us comfortable– then we can be tricked by any false gospel that comes our way, simply because it gives us an emotional high. 

God wants so much more for us, friends. He wants you to have a faith that is based in Truth, a faith that cannot be shaken by your mood or cheap, emotional manipulation set by a church that just wants to hook you on excitement alone. He wants you to be assured of your faith, equipped with the knowledge of the unshakeable Gospel, a firm foundation that is built on the solid rock of Christ.