I was reading through DA Carsons' book and came across this salient point:
"Applied to God, the sentimental view generates a deity with all the awesome holiness of a cuddly toy, all the moral integrity of a marshmallow. In the previous lectures, I briefly documented this point with examples from films and books. Applied to Christians, the sentimental view breeds expectations of transcendental niceness. Whatever else Christians should be, they should be
nice, where “niceness” means smiling a lot and never ever hinting that anyone may be wrong about anything (because that isn’t
nice). In the local church, it means abandoning church discipline (it isn’t
nice), and in many contexts it means restoring adulterers (for instance) to pastoral office at the mere hint of broken repentance. After all, isn’t the church about forgiveness? "
D. A. Carson,
Love in Hard Places (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 11–12.