Our predicament--sin and the judgment of a righteous God--starts with an invisible problem in an invisible space with an invisible person.
And the solution--accepting Jesus into our hearts as our Lord and Savior--is an invisible act that triggers an invisible transaction in an invisible space with the invisible person.
The entire thing, problem and solution, is totally invisible.
Salvation, commonly understood, has no material aspect, no political, social, economic, ecological, behavioral or moral signifiers. Salvation is wholly invisible.
Consequently, salvation can only be tracked through feelings. Feelings are your spiritual GPS. You track where you are in the invisible space by monitoring your psychology.
This is one of the reasons Christian worship has gravitated toward creating a "worship high." Given that Christianity has been reduced to feelings, worship and preaching is judged by its effectiveness in creating powerful feelings.
To be clear, I don't want to dismiss the importance of emotions in spirituality. Joy, peace, wonder, and gratitude are all hugely important. But love, generosity, hospitality, kindness and peace-making are behaviors. My concern here is the feeling/action divorce which allows many Christians to feel loved but who aren't very loving.
A Christian who doesn't love isn't much of a Christian, but far too many Christians don't seem to care, so long as they feel loved by God. If they have the feelings, they count themselves a Christian.
If the great dichotomy used to be Faith vs. Works I think it's now been supplanted by Feelings vs. Actions.
Instead of sola fide, the mantra for modern Christianity has become sola affectio.
We are saved by feelings alone.
