Sap to Syrup

Jeremy S. Begbie does a wonderful job of discussing the dangers of sentimentality and modern evangelical fascination with it. Begbie writes that these deficiencies include the misrepresentation of reality by the evasion or trivialization of evil, emotional self-indulgence, and the avoidance of appropriate costly action. “The sentimentalist loves and hates, grieves or pities not for the sake of the other but for the sake of enjoying love, hate, grief or pity.” (51)

This is the cruel side of sentimentality in that the anger over injustice does not result in action to right the injustice. The pictures of children starving in Africa may evoke pity or concern, but if it does not provoke action, then the felt pity becomes more important than the very real human needs.

Sentimentality creeps into the music of worship as well. As Begbie writes, “In a quite proper concern for intimacy with God through Jesus, reality can be misrepresented…⎯if sin is evaded and trivialized, God is shorn of his freedom and disruptive judgment and taken hostage to my emotional requirements.” (57) Music that is “a direct and unadorned expression of love, with music that is metrically regular, harmonically warm and reassuring, easily accessible and singable” (56) may have a place is worship; however, much of this music in its sentimentality is “isolated from other dimensions of relating to God."

Devotion to Jesus, after all, entails being changed into his likeness by the Spirit⎯a costly and painful process.” (56) The result of neglecting to embrace the broader and deeper theology of the need for the sacrifice of Christ can easily leave us with “a Jesuology that has no room for Jesus as the incarnate Son of the Father, even less room for the wide range of the Spirit’s ministries, and encourages us to tug Jesus into the vortex of our self-defined (emotional) need.” (56)

-Greg Wilbur in his review of the book pictured above