Written by Mark W. Hendrickson |
Thursday, September 1, 2022
As the population declines accelerate, the societal impact will not be pretty, especially for adults who decided that not having children was supposedly a smart economic decision. As is often the case in economic affairs, we see that what makes sense in the short run often does not make sense in the long run. Bottom line: The costs of not having children may be greater than the costs of having them. 

On August 19, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child.” The calculation came from a study at the Brookings Institution, which in turn relied on data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
$300,000 is a lot of money. A primary reason that the cost of raising a child is so high is the everyday reality we all face: high inflation. As noted by Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings, “A lot of people are going to think twice before they have either a first child or a subsequent child because everything is costing more.”
I do not dispute the numbers arrived at in the Brookings study. However, the study is sorely lacking in context. As I recently noted in writing about another important societal issue, i.e., calculating the social cost of carbon dioxide, the most balanced way to frame such an issue is by conducting a cost-benefit analysis. Looking only at the cost side of a ledger can be daunting and depressing. But it’s only half the picture (if that). Comparing benefits with costs completes the picture for a more realistic economic analysis. And since there is more to life than simply economic calculations, presenting only the economic costs of having a child provides less than half a valid analysis.
The great difficulty in trying to compute a cost-benefit analysis for having children is that most of the benefits are non-monetary. How does one attach a dollar value to the love that one feels when sharing the gift of life with children? What are heart-melting moments, heart-felt memories, joy, and psychological and emotional fulfillment worth?
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“Sovereignty characterizes the whole Being of God. He is sovereign in all His attributes. He is sovereign in the exercise of His power. His power is exercised as He wills, when He wills, where He wills. This fact is evidenced on every page of Scripture. For a long season that power appears to be dormant, and then it goes forth with irresistible might.”

At our weekly Theology Breakfast, we have been looking at the Doctrine of God the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, we were thinking about both the attributes of God and the providence of God. The latter of those led to a helpful discussion on the nature of God’s sovereignty with some excellent questions coming up from it.
I would have gladly sat there much longer dealing with the questions, but I was preaching elsewhere in the morning so had to dash off to get to where I was preaching. Later in the afternoon, I encouraged someone – who was asking great questions – to grab a copy of The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink to help think through those questions further. I was pleased to hear they had already (before I suggested it) taken it upon themselves to buy a copy from our book stall. Even in hard places and supposedly non-reading cultures, this is why it pays to give away books, expect people to read and have a book stall available!
Anyway, as I suggested getting a copy of The Sovereignty of God, I was minded to grab my battered old copy off the shelf and start reading it. Though the language is a bit archaic, it’s still readable. It is mercifully short too. But the truths it packs into the book are brilliant and punchy. So, rather than write anything myself, I just thought I would give you an extended quote from Pink on why the absolute sovereignty of God matters (and, if you want my particular thoughts on that, you can get them here instead).
How different is the God of the Bible from the God of modern Christendom! The conception of Deity which prevails most widely today, even among those who profess to give heed to the Scriptures, is a miserable caricature, a pathetic travesty of the Truth. The God of the twentieth century is a helpless, effeminate being who commands the respect of no really thoughtful man. The God of the popular mind is the creation of a maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence. To say that God the Father has purposed the salvation of all mankind, that God the Son died with the express intention of saving the whole human race, and that God the Holy Spirit is now seeking to win the world to Christ; when, as a matter of common observation, it is apparent that the great majority of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and passing into a hopeless eternity: is to say that God the Father is disappointed, that God the Son is dissatisfied, and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated. We have stated the issue baldly, but there is no escaping the conclusion. To argue that God is “trying His best” to save all mankind, but that the majority of men will not let Him save them, is to imply that the will of the Creator is impotent, and that the will of the creature is omnipotent. To throw the blame, as many do, upon the Devil, does not remove the difficulty, for if Satan is defeating the purpose of God, then Satan is Almighty and God is no longer the Supreme Being.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
The overture requiring the titles of elder and deacon to be restricted only to men who serve in that ordained office passed, but even if it had failed it would still remain impermissible to ordain women to the office of deacon, which is what this minister was arguing for. Others arguing against restricting the titles of elder and deacon to ordained men insisted that their specific cultural heritage, namely respect for older members in the church, demanded that they use biblical titles of office for those not ordained to that office. Still others simply stated that they have used these titles for non-ordained women for decades, and that it would be very unpleasant to change course now.

The Presbyterian Church in America met this week [6/10-14/24] for its annual General Assembly (GA), where the entire denomination gathers to deliberate important, denomination-wide matters. Ruling Elder Steve Dowling was an excellent and fair moderator and business progressed in a timely fashion. One might even dare to hope that the trend of ending mid-afternoon on Thursday, as occurred both this year and last year, will continue indefinitely. This year there were fewer outwardly controversial matters debated, though some of the items up for votes were related to bigger issues (the role of women in the church, abuse, etc.).
I attended this year as a voting commissioner and was pleased with how things went. One of the items receiving extra attention is that of who may use the titles of elder or deacon. This one is important because it addresses the fact that women in some PCA churches have been called deacons, though the polity of the PCA requires that this ordained office be only filled by men. Of all the GA debates, I was most surprised by the reasoning of those who opposed the overture that would explicitly forbid the title of elder or deacon being applied to anyone not ordained to that office. One minister presented the commonly used argument that the biblical word “deacon” is applied to women (Phoebe in Rom 12:1, for example). There is a confusion in this argument between the way in which the word “deacon” is used in a more generic sense in scripture simply to mean someone who is serving others in some capacity and the specific office of deacon described in 1 Timothy 3, but what was most striking to me was that this speaker was using this argument very straightforwardly to state that the PCA’s binding polity is simply wrong about women deacons. Even if the PCA’s polity is wrong on this (I don’t believe it is), for the time being that polity is binding on all officers. The overture requiring the titles of elder and deacon to be restricted only to men who serve in that ordained office passed, but even if it had failed it would still remain impermissible to ordain women to the office of deacon, which is what this minister was arguing for. Others arguing against restricting the titles of elder and deacon to ordained men insisted that their specific cultural heritage, namely respect for older members in the church, demanded that they use biblical titles of office for those not ordained to that office. Still others simply stated that they have used these titles for non-ordained women for decades, and that it would be very unpleasant to change course now. I don’t recall hearing a single argument on this side for the permissibility of calling unordained women deacons within the rules of our currently existing polity. This, to me, only goes to show that the real issue has been a lack of enforcement of our polity in the past, not ambiguity about that polity.
One thing that surprised me this year was the failure of an overture that would make binding an amended section of our non-binding Directory of Worship. The section, as newly amended, would mandate that only qualified men can preach. The main argument against this overture was that our binding Book of Church Order (BCO) already mandates that only qualified men can preach. This is true (BCO 12-5.e), though I don’t understand why added clarity on this matter is problematic.
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