Dear Reader,
So far, I’ve hosted five special guests for podcasts on topics as varied as abortion, Native American culture, Church history, the arts and the ancient world, and this past Saturday’s discussion on school choice. If you have yet to subscribe and listen, I hope you will.
I received this encouraging email from a reader traveling this week/weekend:
“I am getting ready to head to a family wedding this weekend and canNOT wait to get on the plane. I have saved your podcasts for JUST this trip!
Thank you for another thoughtful, love-inspired Second Drafts. When the voices in your head are screaming, ‘no more, Craig,’ please do not listen…I appreciate your words every week—they inspire, even if I disagree!”
Plenty more reader feedback below. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.
Craig
Hot Takes
“Bring on the Pitch Clock!” - DH in the National League. Pitchers and catchers going digital. Now pitch clocks? The game of baseball is being destroyed before our very eyes. And I'm pretty disappointed in Joe Posnanski for leading the charge.
Much of this is being driven by television and advertising, with the quality of the game taking the hit. Because I don't get cable, as well as MLB blacking out games online and doing away with the Game of the Week (may it rest in peace), I don't get to watch much baseball and haven't in person since we left St. Louis in 2011. But as a former pitcher and coach, the idea of a clock counting down somewhere in baseball is anathema to me and just doesn't belong.
Many different things have contributed to what some perceive as “the problem”—certainly more advertising, more pitching changes in later innings (Tony La Russa was the king of this), and the occasional pitcher slow things down. But I think most pitchers want to work faster than slower for the sake of keeping momentum (I know I did and coached my guys to do so to keep their fielders awake). A real problem is batters stepping out of the box and repeating their ridiculous routines between pitches. I would suggest that more time is lost waiting on batters than on pitchers, and if MLB wants to speed up the game, there's the easy fix.
Then again, why speed it up at all? When I used to watch games on TV as a kid, or even when we went to the games in person, I planned for three hours. It's a beautiful game that’s meant to pass the time. Let the time pass.
“Educators Weigh in on Summer Reading Lists in SLJ NCTE Survey” - I’m old enough to remember when “educators” made it their mission to motivate students to read great works of literature. I have no problem with new books, but I’m just amazed at the willingness these teachers and librarians have to write off some of the most important and meaningful books of the past 50-100 years, the vast majority of which not only hold up, but have become more insightful with time.
Some are better than others, sure (and this is surely true of the new books as well), but the approach these educators are taking is reinforcing a disdain for anything that is not new, familiar, or preferable. Indeed, I’m all for reading, but we can do better than just reading for the sake of itself.
“Man Told Employer Not to Celebrate His Birthday. He Was Awarded $450,000 After Unwanted Party.” - If there’s a story that captures the challenges of relating to one another in 21st century America, this one might be it. What the guy initially asked for was not unreasonable, but the company was when they went against his wishes and then fired him. My solution? A nationwide mandate banning birthday parties.
Why Definitions Matter
At the risk of seeming old news in light of the recent judicial confirmation, I wanted to make good on my promise to revisit more fully why I found now-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s answer to the question of “Can you provide a definition for the word, ‘woman’?” problematic in her hearing before the Senate a few weeks back. For those who may have missed it, you can view it below.
My issue is not with Jackson herself; she seems a thoughtful and genuine person who claims to be a Christian. But this is a large part of why her statement was troublesome for so many, myself included; her answer (or lack thereof) worked against the image of the truth-teller she was trying to present herself as.
Before I get to my thoughts, though, it seems good to share yours, especially since so many took time to write in response to my drive-by comment and apology from a few weeks ago. I’ll start with this observation from a reader in California:
“Funny how your newsletter lives up to its name in more ways than one. However, could you imagine how long your emails would be if you tried to thoroughly exposit your position on everything you commented on? I guess it’s easier for me because I generally agree with you.”
Several appreciated the apology:
“Thank you for this! Perhaps the most valuable of the emails I've received—and they've been great! I need to learn better how to apologize out loud and not just try to smooth things over with a friend (or my husband, or boys) without actually saying I was wrong. Thank you for your example in this!”
And:
“I had to comment on your apology for your response about our newest Supreme Court justice. It made me reflect on my own response to things, particularly political matters. A great reminder to soften and temper those moments. When I became an Elder at church, I gained a new perspective on listening and trying to not be flippant or dismissive. These traits are good even outside the church!
The online political discussions have become such a harsh, disrespectful scene that it is easy to join in with a similar tone. Even though I totally agree with what you said, I'm grateful that you were called out in the way you were (and responded in the excellent way you did), so that I could learn from it.
Almost every day I see a meme or photo that I'm tempted to post on Instagram, but then realize that it would only add to the problem. I must be growing up!
Thank you for demonstrating a high standard in your mission. You have my admiration.”
Others appreciated the apology, but felt it unnecessary:
“While I don’t want to minimize any reflection of Jesus you might be pursuing, I do want to tell you that your comments didn’t bother me at all. It seems these days many people attribute people's beliefs, values, and ingrained morals as ‘political.’ It's unfortunate because it further dehumanizes the person saying it and discredits what they're trying to say. In my view, calling this or that ‘political’ is another tool to silence others.”
And:
“Keep your head up. I get you feeling bad over a friend getting mad. I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth a few times. However, while a little bit of a smart aleck comment, it isn’t without merit. I must admit that I didn’t follow much on Jackson and what she stood for. I had already accepted that she would get approved. My biggest fear is that she is just to fill two boxes, black and a woman. And honestly, that shouldn’t make anyone proud, if that is all she is. If she is truly the best candidate from the left, then kudos to her. But our current Vice President is a joke. So it totally undoes the claim to fame. I guess time will tell.”
And:
“I respect your sensitivity and humility immensely! However, I personally think you are being too hard on yourself. For a supreme court justice not to be able to define ‘woman’ or to refuse to define woman reveals that the appointment was clearly a political appointment, not a well thought out and logical choice. This ought to be patently obvious for Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal. So, even though I appreciate greatly your heart and your desire not to offend, my opinion is that you have no reason to regret what you wrote. If we are not allowed to take issue with a supreme court justice who does not have enough intelligence or enough backbone to answer such a simple question, we have gotten to the point as a society where it is virtually impossible to have constructive back-and-forth dialogue.”
Others called me out for apologizing:
“You called the KBJ comment correctly; you don’t need to apologize! If we have to be politically correct and not speak the truth, we’ve given up our 1st Amendment Rights. In fact, that she got confirmed proves that this administration can break the law and ignore the constitution—w/o consequences—because we are not to choose our Justices by race OR gender! You could have said that to your unsubscribing friend—told him that you were just speaking the truth, the facts.
We need people ‘out there’ like you to keep reminding us that the U.S. is falling away from her roots…So skirting around the truth in publishing, so you can ‘be charitable’ is what we are all upset about w/ the media today; don’t go there. (I am glad that you are publishing Second Drafts, not me!)”
And:
“For what it’s worth, the fact that Jackson was confirmed left some of us saddened that this glorious nation has gotten to this point. Did a ‘woman’ get confirmed? Can I say, ‘she’ was confirmed? Can one even say a ‘human’ was confirmed, given that the term ‘human’ is even up for subjective definitions. See Nancy Pearcey’s book, Love Thy Body, and stay strong, Craig.”
And:
“No apology needed; you spoke the Truth. Speak the Truth and leave the rest to God. No need to appease a liberal, God-dishonoring agenda. The Gospel/Word of God is an offense to those perishing…Jesus, Paul, Stephen et. al., had full-on enemies…we’re going to have them as well. Your initial stance was not snarky but Truth-filled.”
And:
“It is more important than ever to engage with those who disagree with us. Your unsubscribing friend had an opportunity, and they blew it. My prayer today is for the hearts of those who read your words. To listen and engage with open minds. That together we can make a difference.”
And then I got in trouble (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) for offending everyone:
“It’s me, your friendly ultra-right wing moron subscriber! Now you have offended me by apologizing to offending subscribers. How does it feel to offend everyone?
I really need some left-wing clarification as to how Justice Jackson was selected. Was she selected because of her dedication to protecting the U.S. Constitution, or merely because of her skin color? If Justice Jackson was the most qualified, then perfect. However, when the President states weeks before that he would select a Justice who was black and female, he has already decided qualifications mean nothing, and checking boxes to appease ‘the woke’ in our society is all that matters. Affirmative action has failed since its inception, and quite frankly is insulting! I can’t imagine being told I wasn’t the best candidate for a job, but since I look different than my co-workers to be, I should fit the bill.
The greatest irony being, a Senator from the great state of Delaware, badgering, incoherently nonetheless, a man who was selected by president Bush to be a Supreme Court Justice in 1991. That Justice was Clarence Thomas who is black and the Senator was our current President. If this, plus Justice Jackson being unable to answer what a woman is qualifies me as a pot-shot bullshitter, I will wear the title with pride. Apologize to the other readers if you must, but not to me please, because you have done nothing wrong. Sorry, nothing wrong except support of the St Louis Cardinals. For that error, I will gladly accept an apology!”
Good emails, all, but for my last reader, sorry: I don’t apologize to Atlanta Braves fans.
My Point (and I Do Have One)
All that said, let me try to get to the crux of what I meant and should have said in full a couple of weeks ago by using yet another reader’s question as a prompt:
“With regards to the question asked of Jackson, I would ask you to take on the challenge of how you would answer this ‘real and logical’ question as you have phrased it and would be curious to read it. Even more so, what would your immediate answer be, if not given time to rewrite and edit it, what would be your off the cuff answer? Would it be biological, spiritual, philosophical?
When you are done, look around to the women in your sphere and check to see if they are included in your definition. While it’s easy to think this is about people born as men who ‘become’ women in the cultural panic of the day about a minority issue, Jackson’s non-answer was, I believe, more often about the millions more women who were born women…but who live a life shamed by others when they can’t meet pat definitions of womanhood because they cannot bear children, they have not found love and marriage, they have left a marriage after horrific abuse, they have had to have their reproductive organs removed to save their own life or were never born with those organs or hormones in the first place. What definition could she have given that doesn’t continue to kick these women while they are down?”
In response to her question asking for my “immediate answer,” here’s what I wrote:
“Off the cuff, as you requested, I would default to what has been a pretty tried and true answer for the vast majority of human existence, namely, that a woman is an adult human who is female. This definition encompasses all the women you asked me to consider, and almost all of the assumptions you list are none of the ones I would use as part of a definition of a woman, at least not in the biological sense (which is the sense that Jackson refused to answer).
For what it's worth, I would not consider ‘men who ‘become’ women in the cultural panic of the day’ a minority issue, nor would the present administration, Democratic members of Congress, and ‘progressive’ organizations and churches across the country (at least as represented by their actions and decisions).”
She wrote back:
“Thanks for the answer, but as I’m sure you can guess, the next question I’d follow up with is how do you define female, but maybe that’s not the point as this was the gotcha strategy of the question when asked of Jackson. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But I’ll admit, I’m still curious as to what answer she could have given that would have satisfied you and/or the question-asker as to what the right answer was.
Regarding the minority issue, transgender folks make up <1% of the population and ~7% LBGT, as far as I’ve heard. So, yes, I believe that it is indeed a minority issue, and the decisions made about the specific topic of defining transgender women/men properly will affect a minority of people, so I was using that term in a mathematical way.
That said, I think we can definitely agree that the Democrats, Republicans and TV/Internet/social media have made it feel like a daily crisis by speaking about ideas/theories and ‘what ifs’ instead of speaking to/between/among actual people, which thankfully is at least still part what the Supreme Court still gets to do behind its closed doors.
Always good to give these subjects a good thought and to hear different perspectives. We may rarely agree but I assume we each have the best of intentions at heart, even as we’re on very different paths of how to get there.”
Herein lies the rub; to quote a phrase, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Regardless of how much this reader or I want to arrive at the same place, when we as a society are no longer willing or able to use qualitative terms because they have been so redefined—particularly for immoral and unbiblical purposes—we lose the ability to communicate and (eventually) recognize what is (and isn’t) true. In pursuit of a common good, we have to be able to agree on a common language, because language is what God gave us to make meaning and sense of the world.
When bedrock words like “marriage” and “woman”—words and their preceding language equivalents that have referenced the same certain things for millennia—are suddenly (and I do mean suddenly, within the past 20-30 years, which is .0043% of the past 7,000 years of documented human existence), the effect is exactly what we are seeing today: gender dysphoria among kids, transgender surgery regret among young adults, blurred lines of competition in collegiate sports, preoccupation with promoting sexuality at inappropriate ages (government schools), and an unwillingness and actual inability to be honest and truthful about what reality really is (increasing mental illness).
What poet Robert Frost said about free verse poetry (which he never wrote) is true of our redefinition attempts today: it’s like playing tennis without a net, or handball without a wall; in doing either, you’re no longer playing tennis, and you’re no longer playing handball. You may still be playing—something—but by definition, you’re not playing those games anymore.
Likewise, when a Supreme Court nominee, who I am giving the benefit of the doubt as to intellectual prowess and legal ability as an experienced judge, refuses to even attempt a simple answer to a simple question—“Can you provide a definition for the word, ‘woman’?”—that is problematic. It is a denial of reality, and the playing of another game (in this case, an ideological one).
Flawed Process
To a degree, I agree with a different reader who observed (even as she kindheartedly rebuked me: “I thought your line about Jackson was unfair”) that,
“The hearing process is a joke. No matter who the players are, senators are going to look like bullies, candidates are going to be defensive more than forthright, and we all know it’s going to come down to a numbers game.”
Yes, but Jackson played into the circus with her non-answer, which puts at least some of this on her. Think about it: would she have taken heat from LGBTQ+ groups for giving a basic biological definition? Possibly. But she would have been truthful and not a pawn of the redefinition ideology, which would have won her (or at least not cost her) points with conservatives. Besides, it’s not like Democrats would have voted against their Democratic president’s nominee.
Jackson’s non-answer was telling as to why she was Biden’s pick: it really wasn’t because she was black or a woman or even qualified; it was because she had previously demonstrated—and then proved during the hearings—that she could and would play the redefinition game. This is concerning for a lifetime-appointed Supreme Court Justice. How will our society be subject to her interpretation of the Constitution, which defines our rights as citizens. What words and meanings might be up for change?
Words mean things. Don’t like a word or what it means? Create a new one and a definition to go with it. But leave the old words and their meanings alone; we need them now, more than ever.
Biology with a Smidge of Theology Thrown In
So, in response to my reader’s question, what is a woman? As requested off the cuff, I’ve already given a concise definition (“an adult human who is female”), and I’m sure my more feminist readers are already put off by my attempt (as a male) to put that out there. Let me ask for a little grace: I’m not trying to mansplain anything here; I’m just trying to respond to my reader’s request for my take.
That said, here’s what I would offer as a (slightly) more nuanced perspective in response to the question, “What is a woman?” It is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather is primarily biological with a smidge of theology thrown in:
“A woman is one of two genders created by God, equal in worth to her male counterpart in His eyes. Different from a man and by virtue of her anatomy, a woman’s 23rd pair of chromosomes are xx, she has matching female genitalia, and is the one of the two sexes God designed and equipped to conceive and bear children.”
As an accompanying caveat (again, primarily biological with some theology included):
“In extremely rare cases, chromosomes and genitalia may be mis-matched or ambiguous at birth; in addition (and for varying biological reasons), some women are unable to conceive and bear children. These physical anomalies are due to humanity’s Fall from God’s created perfection, and must be handled delicately with wisdom and love.”
Any of us who love and admire women (which is hopefully all of us) could, based on our own experiences, go on and on about more subjective specifics of womanhood (nurturing), physical attributes (beauty or attraction), differences from men (thinking, feeling, etc.). But all of these are building blocks on the biological and theological basics I’ve outlined as foundational to answering the question, “What is a woman?”
That’s it. That’s all I got. You’re welcome to agree or disagree, I suppose, but as a final consideration of the question, I leave you with this video, which I think is well done.
Post(erity): “We the Pawns?”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something.
This week’s Post(erity) post, “We the Pawns?” is from May of 2008 and is a reflection on things I was learning at the time about our judicial system. An excerpt:
“The framers of the Constitution are rolling over in their graves at the concept of judicial review—our modern-day practice of disregarding the original intent of the Constitution's writers and reading into it our own. I drew the analogy that it's the same thing we deal with in biblical studies—a proper hermeneutic (interpretation) has to start with exegeting (reading out) authorial intent and not isogeting (reading into) desired meaning. This is a major problem in both constitutional and scriptural matters.”
Fresh & Random Linkage
“TQI Exclusive: Montana Instruments’ Tried and Trusted Products Ready to Serve the Growing Quantum Industry” - Look, Ma! We’re famous!
“Bilingual Brain Slows Brain Aging” - Good news for me, since I speak both English and Jive.
“Casting Call for Extras on ‘Yellowstone’ TV Show” - This could be my big break.
Until next time.
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