I recently finished reading Sex and Money: Pleasures that Leave You Empty and Grace that Satisfies by Paul David Tripp, and wanted to jot down some quick notes and recommend it before I forget. I started to call this a “book review” but such is my admiration for Trip that I don’t really feel like I’m entitled to review it as much as to comment on it.

On the whole, though, I highly recommend this book; it does an excellent job analyzing and diagnosing how these two issues – sex and money – lead us astray and captivate our hearts in a way God never designed them to. Tripp analyzes how our culture is, to a large extent, “insane” with respect to these two issues and it offers them up as satisfying our deepest hungers and desires. The problem, though, is not just with our culture, but with our own hearts and desires. We look to these to provide what they never were designed to provide – real, lasting satisfaction.

What this book does best is analyze our hearts and bring the gospel, and Scripture, to bear on the issues it reveals. I’ve thought about both of these issues quite a lot before, but still found this very convicting and challenging, and it uncovered new issues in my own thinking where I’ve at least partly fallen prey to unbiblical thinking and desires. I suspect it will do the same for every Christian, and thus I highly recommend it.

This book is not a book aimed at practical strategies for dealing with sexual sin. That’s not a criticism; it’s not that this book is abstract, but it deals with the core of our thoughts and attitudes – what’s in our hearts, and uncovers the lies we buy in to and how to deal with them. If you have practical issues with sexual purity, you may also want to consider Lambert’s book “Finally Free” (I discussed Finally free here); Lambert’s book is more practical, though it does also get at the heart. To put it another way, Tripp’s book does a better job of uncovering sin and wrong thinking that we might not yet know about; Lambert’s book may be more useful in the area of sexual sin if you know you are struggling and are trying to figure out what to do about it. Tripp’s book is also broader in that it encompasses sex within marriage, as well as the broad category of money.

Overall, I highly recommend the book. I’d be quoting it extensively here, except that I listened to it in audiobook form which makes that a lot harder. I would say it’s going to have a lasting effect on my thinking in these areas, though, so I’ll likely be re-reading it. Check it out!