R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is an astute cultural observer and commentator.  I approached his earlier book, Culture Shift(reviewed here), a bit reluctantly (I’m generally weary of a lot of culture war material), but was so impressed by the keen insights I found there that I decided to read his Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of the New Sexual Tolerance.  I’m glad I did.

Desire and Deceit is a concise, well-organized diagnosis of the sexual wasteland that modern culture finds itself in as well as a powerful proposal for the church to counteract this madness through radical fidelity to God’s ideal of sexual love within the covenant marriage bond.  Mohler addresses pornography, homosexuality, and some of the key figures that have sought and are seeking to redefine basic sexual mores in our times.

I found his chapter on Kinsey to be absolutely unsettling.  Furthermore, his discussion of the homosexual movement’s cultural, political, and theological agenda is well-documented, convincing, and reflects deep and seasoned Christian cultural analysis at its finest.  Mohler somehow manages to avoid the typical hysterical tone that many a red-faced Christian culture warrior puts forth while at the same time writing with passion and genuine concern.

Mohler is reminiscent of early Schaeffer here, or of modern Guinness, and he has done the church a valuable service.  In truth, I needed this book.  In a sense, it is difficult to live in our society, with its constant barrage of secularism and sexual anarchy, and not grow fatigued by the sheer immensity of the anti-Christian forces in our culture.  This fatigue, in turn, leads not so much to disinterest as a sense of resignation with the way things are.  Mohler has cut through the fog here and reminded all of us of what exactly is at stake.  Most importantly, he transcends shrill platitudes and calls, correctly, for the church to lovingly but clearly disarm and win over Christianity’s cultural despisers by showing them in our own lives and homes the beauty and majesty of biblical relationships and covenant marital fidelity.