I remember. The flashing lights, the swirling fog. The energy of the crowd surrounding me. The rush I felt as the drums built up and the chorus erupted. Nothing could touch me—it was just my soul and my Lord’s...peppered with my heightened emotions, of course. Tears flowed down my face as my feelings churned a mixture of elation, conviction, and dedication.

Yes, I too was once a consumer of cotton candy praise, gladly eating the sugar-coated fluff of feel-good worship music. Looking for an emotional experience to make me feel close to God. I should have been a rock-steady follower, understanding that it doesn’t take an emotional experience to be close to God. That our feelings don’t indicate our relationship with Christ (in fact, they’re a terrible thing to base, well, anything off). I should have realized that God didn’t hate me if I didn’t shed a tear or two during “The Stand” like all the “good” Christians were doing. I should’ve known that worship is so, so much more than lifting your hands while your youth pastor strums a guitar around a campfire.

I should have understood…but I didn’t.

As the years passed and more summer camps, youth retreats, and church services came and went, I began to notice that I didn’t feel the same fire that had once been there. There was some sin in my life that I was working through, and because I had not overcome it yet I thought that God got mad and cut me off.

That’s the problem with cotton candy praise. It leads you to believe that you’re only as good as what you feel. It leads you to put your trust in something fickle as your feelings, instead of Jesus. It makes you think that living for Christ entails just singing to Him and feeling good. It contributes to the whole American Dream gospel of identifying as a Christian while living however you want, never submitting to God, becoming dangerously lukewarm. And that’s what I believe I have been called to fight against.

Cotton candy praise dupes you into thinking that worship means lifting your voice in song, rather than laying down your life in surrender.

Much of contemporary Christian music has become nothing more than cheesy emotionalism that sings only of happy times and what God can do for you, rather than praising ALL of who He is. It's watered-down, self-centered pseudo-theology. It's a far cry from exemplifying the spiritual maturity we claim to have. I'm not one of those hymns-only people, but I can see where they're coming from! All one has to do is turn on K-Love and hear their tagline of "Positive. Encouraging." to see that Christian media today highly values feeling good, arguably to a fault.

What happens when your world falls apart? Not so easy to sing then, huh? When we put up fronts, thinking that our relationship with God should be nothing but a dreamy walk in the park, we are less equipped to see how He is still good even when things go wrong. We start to feel disillusioned as if we've been believing a lie the whole time. Well, haven't we? If you think that living for Christ is an easy, breezy ride, then you most definitely have been believing a lie and you're only setting yourself up for disappointment.

We ask to “experience the glory of [the Holy Spirit’s] goodness” rather than asking Him for strength to follow Jesus when it’s costly. We want God to “open up the heavens” because “we want to see Him” but don’t care to obey Him the moment church concludes. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing God’s presence, but that has got to be the beginning and not the end of it. It isn’t enough to sing pretty songs and sway back and forth; that means nothing if you go back to living for your old self, which supposedly died when you gave that old life up for Jesus. Even in our attempts to praise Jesus, we are marked with self-centeredness.

We seek out emotional instances rather than truth. Countless songs speak of God’s unending love, yet these same songs rarely address the accompanying sense of justice and chiding that truly proves His love. Taking scriptural truths out of context isn’t as bad when it’s set to a catchy tune, right? I’m not saying that every single song we sing during church needs to be chock full of good ole’ fashioned fire and brimstone; I’m saying that we should dwell on the whole truth rather than solely the parts we like.

I’m not discounting the fact that there is beauty in simplicity. Yet, oversimplification can be bad. Take the song “Good, Good Father”. The lyrics are better suited for a four-year-old who doesn’t have a very developed a view of God. You can acknowledge God’s goodness without dumbing down the words to an insultingly basic level. Thoughtless repetition of oversimplified truths honestly seems closer to brainwashing than loving God with all your mind.

And so it goes with much of today’s modern “worship” music: too much feel-good kumbaya and not enough substance. We are more than our emotions, shouldn’t our worship be? Shouldn’t we view praise and worship time as a prayerful outpouring and refocusing on Jesus rather than a time to fill up our emotional bucket?

Throw away the sugar-coated fluff that clouds your vision. Focus on the meat of the word of God. Learn to separate your emotions from the way you view your relationship with God. Remember that worship is more than singing songs, it's a way of life.