“In short, we stigmatize the sorrowing by fostering an emotional prosperity culture.”

The author concentrates on sadness, but it’s worth noting that there are other emotions that our church culture will proscribe—anger comes to mind. And when we proscribe emotions that God gave us for His glory, we are going to have a lot of problems.

I confess as well that recently, I “punted” when a guy said he had scored high on a quiz that tried to see signs of PTSD. Sent him to a therapist, a Christian one. Maybe an opportunity for growth.

One other note in this regard is that when a church has “approved” and “unapproved” emotions, especially if they try to “push” the “approved” emotions via the choice of songs, the end result is going to be a congregation of people who are emotionally disconnected from one another. It will be bad.