Written by David J. Ayers |
Thursday, June 30, 2022
A major concern I have had for a long time has not been so much political, as it has been pastoral and personal. This includes what will now be a growing need to care for pregnant women in difficult circumstances before and after they give birth. It includes compassionate ministry for post-abortive women and others, such as the biological fathers of these aborted babies and the families of these women. And this last thing includes, for too many who were comfortable with that decision to abort, helping them see the sin of abortion, encouraging confession and spiritual restoration. We have done a lot, and now will need to do more.

So now it is official. The Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has overturned Roe v. Wade, and the legal issue of whether and how to restrict abortion has been returned to the states.
I cannot imagine how much this is going to be discussed in the coming days, months and even years—from every conceivable angle. Moreover, many states will become legal and political battlegrounds for this issue. This includes my own Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Dobbs shifts and even intensifies the struggle between pro-life and pro-choice, but it certainly does not end it.
Still, those who have stood for the pro-life cause, many of us for decades, have much to be thankful for. Not least among them are the many Evangelicals and Catholics who have stood for life, voting, pressuring, picketing, appealing, funding, manning legal organizations, lobbying, and educational organizations focusing on state and federal efforts, and a lot more. We stayed in the fight and have seen a wonderful victory.
However, a major concern I have had for a long time has not been so much political, as it has been pastoral and personal. This includes what will now be a growing need to care for pregnant women in difficult circumstances before and after they give birth. It includes compassionate ministry for post-abortive women and others, such as the biological fathers of these aborted babies and the families of these women. And this last thing includes, for too many who were comfortable with that decision to abort, helping them see the sin of abortion, encouraging confession and spiritual restoration. We have done a lot, and now will need to do more.
Which brings me to one of the issues I tackled in my recently released book, After the Revolution: Sex and the Single Evangelical. That is, the degree to which abortion is far more common among believers associated with conservative churches which are overwhelmingly opposed to it than most people realize or want to know.
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In Boys Adrift, I also presented evidence that schools bear some of the blame for the disengagement of boys from education. American schools, with a few exceptions, have become unfriendly to boys. Boys doing things that boys have always done—such as pointing fingers at each other saying “bang bang you’re dead”, or doodling a sketch of a sword—now often get into trouble at school. But reprimanding an elementary-school boy for chewing his pastry into the shape of a gun does not change that boy into a flower child who wants to talk about his feelings. 

There is a growing gender gap in higher education. According to the latest figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center: as of spring 2021, women accounted for 59.5% of students attending colleges and universities nationwide. Among four-year private colleges, women now account for 61% of all students. Both figures represent new records. Douglas Shapiro, executive director of research at the National Student Clearinghouse, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that if current trends continue, within a few years there will be two women graduating from college for every one man.
Well, so what? In 1970, men accounted for 58% of students attending colleges and universities, and there was no great outcry back then about the gender imbalance. Why should we be concerned now that the pendulum has swung in the other direction?
I think there are good reasons for concern, which can be summed up in three words: “educational assortative mating.” Educational assortative mating means that if a woman has earned a four-year degree and she is looking for a husband, she will usually choose a man whose educational achievement is equal to or greater than her own. Fifty years ago, if a man earned a four-year degree and was looking for a woman to marry, he might have many qualifications in mind for his future wife; but educational attainment was not one of them. In that era, college-educated men were happy to marry women who had never attended college. In our era, college-educated women are hoping to marry college-educated men. And there are not enough college-educated men to go around.
This problem is not confined to the college educated. I am a family doctor. A young woman in my own practice, let’s call her Linda, has two small children. She has never been married. She has never attended college. I bumped into the father of her two children. He told me how much he loves Linda. He told me that he has proposed marriage, twice, and both times Linda turned him down. I asked Linda, as gently as I could, why she did not want to marry the father of her two children. She answered: “Dr. Sax, I already have two babies at home. I don’t need a third!”
At every level, not just among the college-educated, young women seeking a man to marry are looking for men who are at least as competent and hard-working as they are. But ever since the 1980s, boys’ academic achievement in high school has declined relative to girls, not primarily because girls are doing better but because boys are doing worse.
Marriage rates in the United States peaked at 16.4 per 1,000 per year in 1946. As recently as 1990, marriage rates were still 9.8 per 1,000. Right now, the marriage rate is 6.1 per 1,000: that’s the lowest on record, going back to the 1880s. Although many factors have contributed to the decline in marriage, scholars agree that one major factor driving the decline is the reality that many women want their husbands to earn more than they do. American women have always tended to prefer husbands who can earn more than they do, but the growing phenomenon of underachieving young men means that there are not enough successful men to go around.
Nevertheless, many women still want to have children.
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We need to hold onto the truth that God is sovereign, that even through hardships he is working what is good. If we don’t, when hardship comes we will either label God impotent (by blaming the evil) or we’ll question his goodness.

Imagine you wake up early in the morning and tuning into the radio you hear of an incident that took place in the night. You hear the reporter saying that they have never seen something like it before. All the bars and nightclubs have burned up and no one was hurt. Knowing what happens at bars and nightclubs, if you’re a Christian you would probably rejoice; you’d praise our sovereign God. ‘Thank God something happened to those places. Now our young people won’t be wandering around in them.’ We will say that God did something in the night. We’d praise him in the morning.
Now imagine a different scenario. Another morning. You wake up to the news that your government wants to stop the gatherings of believers. I am sure that we’d come together and pray against such a thing. We might even be tempted to say that the devil is at work.
So, who’s in control when major events happen? Do we attribute the good to God and the bad to the devil? Well, the devil is undoubtedly at work. And we know that he opposes God, both his plans and his people. While Jesus gives new life, in abundance, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10-11). Does this make our world a kind of cosmic wrestling match? Should we attribute bad things to God? Or can we just blame it on the devil? In this article I’m going to argue that God uses everything for his purposes, whether good or bad. Nothing falls outside of his power or plans. He is sovereign over everything he made.
Who Stands Above Suffering and Evil?
When we only attribute good things to God’s action, we limit him. For it implies that God is powerless to prevent bad things. In fact, by doing this we give power over to the enemy. We share God’s sovereignty with the evil one.
Now, consider the biblical witness. Scripture contains countless stories of people experiencing hardship, even immense suffering (Job 1:14-19). Were these things to happen to us we’d be tempted to say God doesn’t love us; or that he doesn’t care about his people. We rightly associate God with power and protection, preventing harm. However, the men and women who endure tremendous suffering in the Bible often recognise God’s control. They entrust themselves to his sovereignty. They cling onto God’s love when they don’t necessarily understand his purposes.
As Job cried out, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:20-21). Joseph understood, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20a). Neither deny God’s sovereignty. Nor do they question his goodness. Instead they understand that God is in control.
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