Sentimentalism is the displacement of truth by feeling. It treats the warmth of an emotion as the test of its validity, regardless of whether the thing felt is true. In religion, sentimentalism asks "did it move me?" rather than "was it true?" It sings vacuous worship songs because they stir emotions, tolerates vague theology because precision feels cold, avoids hard doctrines because they are uncomfortable, measures pastoral ministry by how people "feel" about the pastor. Sentimentalism is not the same as legitimate emotion — Scripture is full of tears, joy, anger, and awe. The Psalms are emotionally intense. Jesus wept. Paul confessed weeping for the Ephesian elders. Legitimate emotion is the proper response of the whole person to reality. Sentimentalism is different: it is emotion detached from reality and treated as self-validating. C.S. Lewis called it "a disease of the imagination that substitutes warm feelings for costly virtue." The Victorian age institutionalized sentimentalism in religion, and American evangelicalism absorbed much of it — producing the Jesus of plastic statues, mawkish hymns, and therapeutic sermons that leave you feeling good but not convicted. Scripture's emotional range is wider and truer: the wrath of God as well as His love, the weeping of Jeremiah as well as the singing of the Psalms, the laughter of Sarah as well as the anguish of Gethsemane. Biblical Christianity includes strong feeling but never bases conviction on feeling. "Let God be true but every man a liar" (Romans 3:4). Truth first; emotion will follow truth; but emotion divorced from truth is a con.