A debut book offers a critique of humanity’s failure to stay true to God.

Moses argues that despite God’s unwavering desire to maintain a close relationship with his flock, humanity has repeatedly betrayed him. Even the two modern nations explicitly founded on a fidelity to biblical principles—the United States and Israel—have violated the religious premises that originally animated them. In fact, the author contends, the U.S.’s unprecedented power has accumulated in direct proportion to its moral decline.

To demonstrate the precise nature of this fall from grace, Moses traces the ancient history of humanity’s floundering back to Adam’s original disobedience. Despite being given complete dominion over God’s creation, Adam fails to protect Eve from the temptations of Satan. Adam’s authority is essentially handed over to Satan, a transference that marks the beginning of human suffering.

The author then traces the biblical aftermath, cataloging God’s desire to begin anew with humans, offering them chance after chance at redemption through covenants they ungratefully insist on breaking.

He describes humanity’s modern predicament as the result of a kind of collective deficit in moral maturity:

That is why we are in the mess that we are right now. We are like that three-year-old toddler having a tantrum because things aren’t going the way we want them to go.”

He describes humanity’s modern predicament as the result of a kind of collective deficit in moral maturity: “That is why we are in the mess that we are right now. We are like that three-year-old toddler having a tantrum because things aren’t going the way we want them to go.” The good news, according to the author, is that God’s longing to be close to humanity is eternal, and the possibility for redemption is ever available. The study’s prose is consistently pellucid, and the author carefully describes the biblical history of humans’ relationship to God as one of successive missteps on their part and infinite forgiveness on God’s.

Theologically, this book doesn’t break any new ground—most devoted Christians will be amply familiar with the biblical history the author recounts. In addition, the critique of humanity’s moral decline seems more like a jeremiad than a piece of rigorous analysis.

For example, it would have been intriguing to see a rebuttal of recent arguments (such as by the psychologist Steven Pinker) that humankind has become more peaceable and tolerant. But this is far too brief a monograph to permit such considerations at any length, if at all.