Our thoughts are tethered to our feelings: this is a key message of Frank Schaeffer's SEX, MOM, & GOD.Schaeffer describes his unusually explicit and early sex education, his unusually creative and energetic mother, and his conflicted relationship with the God of the (very literally interpreted) Bible. He shows how all of this generated feelings that led to the extreme Christian fundamentalist stance of his young adulthood during which he worked diligently (and angrily) to convert the United States to a Bible-believing nation, as well as to his later embrace of a God of Mystery, his growing comfort with not knowing the exact nature of Ultimate Reality, and his own life of creativity.As always, Frank Schaeffer's gifts both as a storyteller and as an essayist provide a wonderful read. Schaeffer's stories are charming, outrageous, and often hilarious. Two of them particularly come to mind: having sex with an ice sculpture, and bathing under the supervision of a kind-hearted babysitter who was obsessed with the Queen of England.The essay-type parts of Schaeffer's book are fascinating. As a former extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, Schaeffer understands that mindset from the inside. From his own experience, Schaeffer knows that the intellectual gloss of fundamentalist thought is undergirded by strong emotions and psychological needs. Schaeffer excels at making these thought/feeling connections clear and vivid. Having read SEX, MOM, & GOD, I now have a far better understanding of why it is so very difficult for fundamentalists to recognize the paradoxes of life and the possibility that there may be other equally valid ways to truth besides their own, of why the second generation of Christian fundamentalist preachers like Franklin Graham tend to become more extreme and strident than their fathers, and of why the pro-life and pro-choice factions have become so terribly polarized on the issue of abortion.But here is the best thing about SEX, MOM, & GOD: Schaeffer shows the blessing in the shadow. This is a gentler book than Schaeffer's CRAZY FOR GOD, where Schaeffer, an inveterate truth-teller, reveals the shadow side of his Christian fundamentalist upbringing. In CRAZY FOR GOD, we learn that Schaeffer's highly revered parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, had some serious weaknesses that were kept hidden so as not to tarnish their Christian ministry. CRAZY FOR GOD shows the shadow side of Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their ministry.Now in SEX, MOM, & GOD, we see much more of the blessing in the shadow. Schaeffer presents us with some of the stories about Edith Schaeffer from CRAZY FOR GOD, but in a very different light. Edith Schaeffer's courage, love, and creativity now shine, even in the midst of what seem to be her failings. A case in point is Edith Schaeffer's almost love affair with a sensitive young artist: it is fascinating to compare the way Schaeffer tells this story in CRAZY FOR GOD with the way he tells it in SEX, MOM, & GOD. In the former instance, we see Edith Schaeffer's failing; in the latter, her courage and love for her family.Schaeffer's love for his mother shines through in SEX, MOM, & GOD. Schaeffer attributes his own creative life to what he learned from his mother. "I simply chose to follow the `other' Edith Schaeffer, the one whose heart was elsewhere than in the lifeless theories she paid lip-service to," Schaeffer says on page 91. Thank God you did, Frank Schaeffer! Thank God!