[Dr. Mohler serves as the President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also a CBMW council member and regular blogger.]

Some social changes creep along and are barely perceptible. Others are marked by the instantaneous arrival of a new technology, an earthquake, or an earth-shaking event like World War II. Some are foreseen, while others are surprises. Some should have been foreseen.

This is surely the case with one of the most significant social changes of our times — the emergence of a new American matriarchy.

Writing in Reason magazine, Jonathan Rauch explains:

Suppose you could memorize only a single demographic number and you set about choosing the one with the most far-reaching implications for change in America. You could do worse than 1.5.

Of course, there are plenty of possibilities: the birth rate, the teen-pregnancy or illegitimacy rate, the percentage of the population that is white or foreign-born, the percentage of elderly. But unpack 1.5 and you have the makings of a social inversion: a turning upside down of the male-dominated order that Americans have taken for granted since — well, since forever. The number 1.5 is, in this case, a ratio. According to projections by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2017 half again as many women as men will earn bachelor's degrees. In the early 1990s, six women graduated from college for every five men who did so; today, the ratio is about 4-to-3. A decade from now, it will be 3-to-2 — and rising, on current trends.

That's right. By 2017 women college graduates will outnumber male college graduates by a ratio of 1.5 — half again as many women. As Rauch acknowledges, no one is quite sure why this is happening, but a look around most major college and university campuses will be enough to verify the trend. Female students now outnumber male students in higher education.

Rauch puts the development into historical context, noting that feminism and other trends — including economic realities — attracted women into the workplace. Since the better jobs went to educated workers, women streamed into the colleges and professional schools, including law and medicine. By the late 1990s, women students actually outnumbered men on many campuses. By 2008, the pattern was both undeniable and advanced.

Rauch is among those who wonder why the rates of young men going to college have not kept pace with female enrollment gains. The job market still favors educated workers — perhaps even more than when large numbers of men entered college ranks decades ago. There is no clear reason why this is so... but it is.

As Rauch understands, this will mean huge social changes. "So what we are talking about, in all likelihood, is an America where women are better educated than men and where education matters more than ever, " Rauch explains. "Put those facts together, and you get some implications worth pondering." That represents an understatement.

In Rauch's words:

A generation from now, the female lawyer with her male assistant will be the cliché. Look for women to outnumber men in many elite professions, and potentially in the political system that the professions feed. (The election of a female president is a question of when, not whether.)

Women's superior education will increase their earning power relative to men's, and on average they will be marrying down, educationally speaking. A third of today's college-bound 12-year-old girls can expect to "settle" for a mate without a university diploma. But women will not stop wanting to be hands-on moms.

For families, this will pose a dilemma. Women will have a comparative advantage at both parenting and breadwinning. Many women will want to take time off for child-rearing, but the cost of keeping a college-educated mom at home while a high-school-educated dad works will be high, often prohibitive.

While those predictions point to the next decade, Rauch insists that the most basic revolution has already taken place. Thus:

In 2006, according to the Census Bureau, about 27 million American men held a college degree; so did about 27 million American women. This is a tipping point, however, not an equilibrium, because male college graduates tend to be old, and female graduates tend to be young. Among people age 65 and older, men are much more likely than women to be college-educated. Middle-aged men and women are at parity. Among young adults ages 25 to 34 years old, the college gap favors women almost as lopsidedly as it favors men among their grandparents' generation.

Here is the new reality:

In other words, today's young people already live in a world where, among their peers, women are better educated than men. As the grandparents die off, every year the country's college-educated population will become more feminized. In a couple of decades, America's educational elite will be as disproportionately female as it once was male.

The social impact of this revolution is huge. Look, for example, at a classroom of 12-year-olds. Fully one third of the college-bound girls will eventually have to settle for a husband who lacks a college education. As Rauch warns, this may well mean " a cascading series of psychological and emotional adjustments as American society tilts, for the first time, toward matriarchy." More specifically, "What happens to male self-esteem when men are No. 2 (and not necessarily trying harder)? When more men work for women than the other way around?"

The pattern is not limited to the United States. Most of the nations with advanced economies report similar trends.

Some will undoubtedly celebrate these trends. Ideological feminism can only applaud this reversal of history. Yet, truth be known, even many social liberals must find the trend worrisome. Their concern is not the fact that young women are going to college, but that young men are not. What about their own sons?

Christians committed to a biblical model of marriage and gender relations must look to this social revolution with a deeper level of concern. The most significant concern must be the long-term consequences of a new matriarchal world order. While Christians support the cause of higher education, the biblical worldview puts a higher priority upon the rightly ordered family and church. This dramatic social change will only serve to subvert that purpose.

What about our own sons? Are they being encouraged toward education and leadership in the home, the church, and the culture? If not, we will surely reap what we sow. If you talk to the young women on college campuses, you will find that many are asking the same question. Where are the young men?

In reality, most people are likely to experience the intuition that this is not a good development. A look into the future is truly troubling. A look at today's college enrollment is enough to verify that concern. There is something wrong with this picture.

[This post is the second in a series from Dustin Benge encouraging men to pursue true biblical friendship. — David Kotter]

I look back on my life, and think of the numerous friendships that I have had the privilege to participate. Some friendships were only for a season, but were enriching to my life. Then others that remain to this day that have blossomed from friendship into a brotherhood with a bond that cannot be broken. To be honest, I have never been the best at making friends. I have always been backward, awkward and shy around people I don't know. Never being the person that begins the conversation with a stranger. Always being the person in the back of the room timid and a bit scared at how others look at me. However, those enduring friendships that God has brought into my life have been a bottomless fountain upon which I draw for daily strength. In other words, I had rather have one really good friend than many acquaintances.

"Friendship," John Adams has written to his classmate and cousin, Nathan Webb, "Is one of the distinguishing glory's of man... From this I expect to receive the chief happiness of my future life." I have to agree with my favorite person in American History. True friendship between two people should bring happiness and joy. Friends are concerned about the well-being of one another. Friends are intimately involved in the good and bad times of one another's lives. Friends are always a rock upon which each can lean in times of storm. Friends enjoy a relationship that is deep, wide, high, and long reaching back into history reflecting all those friends who came before us.

According to Augustine, "In this world two things are essential: a healthy life and friendship. God created humans so that they might exist and live: this is life. But if they are not to remain solitary, there must be friendship." By all accounts, he was intent on living by the ideology he preached: it was a simple fact that Augustine hardly ever spent a moment of his life without some friend close by. While he was a middle-aged man (in letter 130, written in his mid-fifties) he could write that there is nothing enjoyable without good friends, and right near the end of his life, toward the end of the City of God, he could still ask rhetorically, "What gives us consolation in this human society filled as it is with errors and troubles, if not the sincere loyalty and mutual love of true and good friends?"

Augustine, perhaps better than anyone in Church history, understood human relationships. He valued the relationships he had while on the earth but was never satisfied. His supreme hope was to fully enjoy a friendship and intimacy with his Creator.

Friendship is a gift from God given to man to reflect the relationship that the Trinity shares within Themselves. Reflecting the relationship that God and Adam shared before the fall. A relationship we will share with Christ in the New Heaven and the New Earth.

[Dustin Benge is a blogger and a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  This is the first of a two-part Gender Blog series on friendship for men. — David Kotter] 

Brothers, let us consider male friendship in our thoughts. Not the friendship of mere acquaintance and seldom fellowship, but the friendship of another kind. A friendship that causes the two involved to be open and venerable toward one another. A friendship that places the others needs over and above self. A friendship that creates a bond of fellowship that cannot be broken with any weapon that can be crafted upon this earth. A friendship that loves, forgives, helps, strengthens, and encourages.

The discipline involved in the cultivation of a true male friendship is unparalleled in any other venture besides marriage. It is difficult and hard to be a true friend — it takes work and strenuous labor to cultivate such a relationship. The act of friendship must be a mutual consensus between two individuals for heartfelt fellowship and devotion toward one another. "Friendship," John Adams has written to his classmate and cousin, Nathan Webb, "Is one of the distinguishing glory's of man... From this I expect to receive the chief happiness of my future life." Yes, when friendship is tended too, when it is fed with happiness, fellowship, devotion and meaningful conversation it becomes an overarching happiness in the realm of Christian piety and love.

The great travesty of our time is the lack of male friendship between Christian brothers. There is an "alone" mentality and the sense of needing no one else. These male bonds of yesteryear have been broken by a competition mindset. Jealousy has invaded the lives of many pastors causing them to shrink from the duty of befriending and training younger ministers of the gospel. The desire for prestige within certain Christian circles has caused many male bonds to be severed.

However, the role of another male friend is unique and cannot be matched by any other relationship. Society sees true male Christian friendship as something foreign. Camaraderie between male friends has been looked upon with suspicion of homosexuality. My brothers, this is a travesty of our time! What happened to male friends who sat and discussed great books until the early hours of morning? What happened to male friends enjoying Godly conversation over a cup of good coffee? What happened to male friends, together, making a difference in the course of history?  

It was Christ Himself demonstrating the evidence of true friendship when he "lay down His life for His friends" (John 15:13). May we continue, brothers, to cultivate and fed the camaraderie of our male friendships to become as David and Jonathan.

If God made man and woman equal, then why to they have different roles? This is a deep question which I will attempt to address briefly.

If this question is seeking to know how men and women can be equal in personhood and value before God, yet different with respect to roles, it is crucial that we look to the Trinity as the supreme example of both equality and distinction. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one and are equal in nature/essence, yet they are distinct persons and have different roles in creation and in salvation.

First, each person in the Godhead was involved in the creation of the heavens and the earth, yet each person was involved in a different way (Genesis 1:1-2; Psalm 33:6; John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-16; Hebrews 1:1-3). It is clear from these texts that God the Father created the world by his Word, his Son Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3), and that the Holy Spirit was intimately involved.

Second, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have different roles in planning, accomplishing, and applying salvation (for a wonderful picture of this Trinitarian work, see Ephesians 1:3-14). God the Father, as the head, planned salvation according to his perfect will and has chosen a people, his church, from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-6). God the Son, Jesus Christ, who was sent by his Father (John 3:16-17, 6:38, 8:42; Galatians 4:4-5), has accomplished this great salvation through his sinless life, death, burial, and resurrection. This was done in accordance with the Father's supreme will for his glory (Eph 1:6, 12, 14). God the Father forgives, redeems, and adopts his children through the person and work of his Son (Eph 1:4, 5, 7) to the praise of his glorious grace.

Finally, God the Holy Spirit applies the work of Christ to the believer and he/she is sealed with the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of his/her inheritance. Those who have the Spirit are children of God. These and many other passages throughout Scripture clearly teach that God is one and that his whole and undivided essence belongs equally, fully, simultaneously, and eternally to each of the three distinct persons of the Godhead — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and they each work in harmony with one another to fulfill the Father's perfect will.

If, on the other hand, this question is seeking to give an answer as to what was going on in the mind of God when he made men and women equal yet different, the Bible does not give an exact answer.

However, Ephesians 5:31-32 says that God's original intent was to display the relationship of Christ and the church through marriage. Marriage was intended from the beginning to serve as a picture of Christ and the church, and the apostle Paul gives commands to husbands and wives which are intended to display this (Ephesians 5:22-25, 28). This is followed by a citation from Genesis 2:24: "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" (Ephesians 5:31). Yet Paul goes on to say that this is ultimately not a statement about husbands and wives but about Christ and the church: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5:32). Paul does not say that the relationship between Christ and his church is like a marriage. Rather, he claims that marriage is really a picture of a much more profound reality — the uniting of the Son of God to his bride. Thus, the relationship between man and woman in the beginning was patterned after the relationship between Christ and the church — a relationship in which each has a distinct role, with Christ serving as the head.

[Owen Strachan is a former intern at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and is presently a Ph.D. student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in historical theology.  He and his wife live in Highland Park, Illinois.  You can read more of his thoughts on biblical masculinity at his blog. — David Kotter]

Where our grandfathers could typically care less about what they looked like, modern men are increasingly concerned with their appearances. Many sociologists have noted this trend, pointing out that men have moved into traditionally feminine territory in constantly caring for their bodily comportment. The Adonis Complex, a 2000 book writted by doctors/researchers Harrison Pope, Katharine Phillips, and Roberto Olivardia, examines this phenomenon, taking special pains to point out how many men have become obsessed with how they look.

I would encourage readers to check this book out. Parents will be helped by it as it will help them to understand the common struggles of young men today, and young men themselves, whether Christian or not, will be helped by studying the effects of narcissism. We live in an appearance-obsessed society, and this book illuminates the results of such a culture. Many men today are focused on their bodies that they end up with a condition called "Body Dysmorphic Disorder," in which they perceive their body differently than it really is. In other words, though many men are strong, they perceive themselves to be weak. Or, men who have a good head of hair (though perhaps receding as is the natural course for men) find themselves unable to cope with a perceived, not real, follicle fallout. Though one might think that it's only "muscle men" or guys who spend an inordinate amount of time at the gym who struggle with "BDD," it's not. Your average teenager has been bombarded with images--images of abs, images of impossibly muscled bodybuilders, images of athletes with muscles on their muscles, images in movies (a medium that overwhelmingly favors the beautiful), images on tv, images on the computer--such that it is incredibly difficult not to worry a great deal about one's appearance.

I can see the effects of such a culture on myself and many other Christian men I know, particularly men of my age. We are all much too concerned with how we look, to put it simply. We worry about things our grandfathers did not think about for more than a minute over the span of their entire lives--our hairline, our biceps, the relative hardness of our abs. Are you kidding me? They were too busy with real things, important things, to give attention to their hairlines. Yet I find myself concerned with such things, to my shame. Here is hoping that we young Christian men can rebel against our contemporary culture. We should take care of our bodies, we should pursue health, and we should not adopt a gnostic, anti-aesthetic, dualistic mindset (mind/spirit: good, body: bad) and baptize it in Christian parlance. However, when we are healthy and fit, we should leave things be and let the culture obsess over its pecs, its abs, it eyebrow wrinkles.

If we are obsessed with such matters--and if you constantly check out your appearance in the mirror, fret if you don't get to the gym daily, and are constantly worried about how you look, then you're obsessed--then we must turn to Christ, repent of our narcissism and concern with lesser things, and seek accountability and discipline in order that we might turn away from our sin.

In point of fact, all of us could probably do some repenting over this matter. It's one thing to take care of your body--it's another thing to obsess over it. Would that we would give Christ as much devotion as we do our hairlines.