Sentimentalism: Disloyalty to God

Sentimentalism is the vice that presents itself as a virtue. This is the enemy waving the flag of allegiance -- a traitor with a reassuring smile. Affections and emotions are good and God-given, but a sentimentalist is someone who is willing to add to or override what God says in the name of feels right or wrong. Often sentimentalists create artificial barriers in their lives, willing to commit some high-handed sin in one area, while justifying themselves with fuzzy feelings in some other realm. Also sometimes known as "transcendentalism," an appeal to "higher law" is often given as a pious sounding "ends justify the means" philosophy. And America is full of this kind of sinister behavior, demanding on the one hand that the disabled, handicapped and mentally retarded be given extra medical attention, additional money and special parking places, while simultaneously insisting that people have the right to chop these same sorts of people up if they haven't been born yet, or remove their feeding tubes if they are considered inconvenient. Sentimentalists hide their bloody hands with Hallmark cards and Precious Moments figurines. Sentimentalism is disloyalty [to God] on a grand scale and, when entrenched, knows no limits.
-- Toby J. Sumpter, in Omnibus III Reformation to the Present