In a world where love is an emotion (and all about romance), faith becomes an emotional rollercoaster as well. But when your faith is in your emotions instead of God, it inevitably fails. That's a fact. God is not your emotions and your emotions are not God. God is not produced by the mind, nor is he created when life strikes.
Emotions do have their place. Our bodies were designed with a built-in fight-or-flight (or freeze or fawn) reaction in place--that is, physically we are geared towards survival. Not necessarily in the evolutionary sense, though. Craving safety (survival) does not necessitate a gradual positive development away from monkeyhood.
When a "threat" approaches, our natural instinct is to run and hide (flight), approach it head on like a charging bull (fight), freak out about the inevitable or completely avoidable (fright), or pretend that it never happened (fawn). If a car is zipping down an intersection during a red light, the natural instinct is to slam the breaks on now. Through a whirl of adrenaline, our body drives us to safety. Emotions are only the natural course of action.
But emotions are more than present in life-or-death scenarios. Emotions exist in our daily lives--from the car rides to the financial slides. Even in the smallest of moments, emotions are there, slowly coloring the world we walk in.
But emotions aren't truth.
The evangelical church culture of this day and age leans heavily emotional. While pastors may preach warnings about waiting for the "Spirit feeling," no doubt several Christians determine their faith by their emotional impulses. The Spirit will guide you, is the common mantra. There will be signs, and those signs will (supposedly) be emotional.
So, when one's emotions say God doesn't exist, does the world change because of that?
Subjectively, yes. Objectively, no. One could believe the world is only blue, but that does not cancel out the fact that the color red remains present. When emotions are used to guide every fact, to the point of faith, there is bound to be a falling. The world changes with every day when emotions are the rubric. They have their place, yes, but they become a trap when relied on--to the point of more so than God.
Then is God an emotion? Is God a spiritual feeling in the heart that flutters awake when the first day of the week rolls around? Or is God a being who wants to relate? One does not get a "Sam" feeling or a "John" feeling. Why does the invisible God become the exception?
Why has church become an emotional experience?