There is something morbidly fascinating about watching dictionaries slowly but surely change their definitions of common words. It raises some questions, not the least of which strike to the very purpose of a dictionary. Is a dictionary meant to be an objective arbiter of the meaning of words? Or is a dictionary meant to subjectively list the ways in which words are used among the speakers of a particular language at a particular time? These are valid questions, especially in moments when certain key words are being intensely debated.

It is not without significance that Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2022 was woman. “It’s one of the oldest words in the English language,” they say. “One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022.” They explain that searches for the word spiked last year, first when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked to provide her definition of the term—a request she denied—, then again at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and, though they don’t mention it, probably also when Matt Walsh released his film What Is a Woman?.

It was a rare case of not just a word in the spotlight, but a definition. We at Dictionary.com weren’t the only ones to take notice. The prominence of the question and the attention it received demonstrate how issues of transgender identity and rights are now frequently at the forefront of our national discourse. More than ever, we are all faced with questions about who gets to identify as a woman (or a man, or neither). The policies that these questions inform transcend the importance of any dictionary definition—they directly impact people’s lives.

They make their position on dictionaries clear when they insist that the purpose of theirs is to reflect “how people use words in the real world” and they make their position on gender identity clear when they insist that a “dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman. The word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves.” In other words, they believe people are free to define themselves however they see fit and that a good dictionary will serve people by ensuring it defines words in such a way as to affirm individuals’ self-identity.
It’s only fair to point out that dictionaries do routinely change words to keep up with the times. Look up the word bomb and you’ll find definitions that are relatively recent—definitions that may help people understand what it means when someone says, “that movie bombed” or “that movie was the bomb” or “don’t ever shout ‘bomb’ in a crowded movie theater.” Meanwhile, they also remove or de-prioritize definitions that have become antiquated. In that way we do expect dictionaries to provide definitions of words as they are actually used.
Yet dictionaries are also considered sources of truth, perhaps even objective truth, and are often used to back up truth claims. We appeal to dictionaries when we have disputes and expect they will guide us well. We have been trained to know that when we wonder at the meaning of a word—a word like woman, for example—we should turn to a dictionary for its guidance. In days past we would have found a definition like “an adult female human being.” Today, though, we may also find something like this: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth” (Cambridge). (It should be noted that while many people are saying we need to insist upon defining woman as “an adult female human being,” some dictionaries have also changed the definition of female to something like “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male” (Merriam-Webster).)
What is the point of considering how dictionaries are changing today? First, it affirms that in our day everything is political and that all of society’s structures and institutions are being made subservient to political ends. Hence even dictionaries are expected to play their part by changing words in response to changing cultural narratives. What was until recently unthinkable has now been enshrined by the institutions that are considered to have the greatest definitional authority. (See Carl Trueman on this.)
Second, it affirms that in our society self-definition is considered unassailable so that a person’s individual defining of a word must reign over a dictionary’s. A dictionary can suggest, but it is the individual who determines. Ultimately, if I say I am a woman, I am a woman, no matter what the dictionary (or biology textbook) might say. For the individual is sovereign over even definitions and no one has the right to tell me I have defined myself wrongly or inaccurately.
Third, it affirms and reaffirms that as Christians there is no earthly institution that we can fully rely on, for all of them are influenced by “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Even dictionaries will be turned against the Lord, against his people, and against his truth. Even they will make him an enemy.
But none of this should trouble us to any great degree, for God has given us a source of truth that reigns over every book, every dictionary, every source of information. God has given us his truth in his Word and it reigns supreme. And he makes it abundantly clear in his Word that a woman is an adult, female human being who has been made in God’s image and created as a counterpart to man—an adult, male human being. Male and female he created them and male and female they will always be—male and female in their bodies, male and female in their minds, male and female in their ways of relating to God, to one another, and to the world around. And when even the best and greatest dictionaries have become defunct and crumbled into dust, that Word will remain fixed and constant, inerrant and infallible, as trustworthy then as it is right now and has always been.

Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Kindle deals include an interesting title by Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra.
(Yesterday on the blog: Deconstruction, Exvangelicals, and Jumping Overboard from an Ocean Liner)
Should Christians Always Submit to the Government?
Robert W. Yarbrough comments on Romans 13 and whether Christians should always submit to the government.
We have to work in the confines of reality
“Jesus has not called us to shepherd churches other than the ones he has given us. He doesn’t ask us to think about all the great things we would do for him if everything was different. He calls us to faithfully serve him, and the people he has given us to care for, where we are, within all the realities of our context.”
Changing Who We Spend Time with as We Get Older
There are some interesting visualizations here about who we spend time with as we get older. This data can be helpful as we seek to prepare ourselves for the years ahead and as we serve people in our churches.
Who Are the True People of God?
Here’s a covenantal perspective on the question, “Who are the true people of God?”
John and Amy’s Kitchen Table (and what it says about worship)
“It was one of those serendipitous moments. There, advertised on the Facebook page of a friend from my old days at Fremantle Assemblies of God church in the mid 1980s, was the kitchen table and chair set we had been looking for. My friend was married to another friend from my even older days at Attadale Baptist Church in the late 1970s. This just had to be!”
The Bible’s Strange Reasons for Generosity
John Beeson: “We tend to think about stewardship and generosity as something God calls us to once we’ve got it all together. But that’s not how Paul thinks about generosity. Paul invites the spiritually immature into generosity. Generosity is for everyone. Paul wants us all to experience the blessing of the grace that is generosity. He urges this church to step into God’s grace in this way.”
Flashback: Why Christians Blogs Aren’t What They Used To Be
Today fewer people are beginning blogs in the first place and more are abandoning the ones they began in the past. A recent check of my favorite sites found almost 30 that have gone dormant in the past few months. What’s happened?

Soldiers have never been so admired for their victories as the saints have been for their sufferings. —Thomas Watson

The strange machine along the streets of Madrid seized my attention.

Its long arms reached out and wrapped themselves around the trunk of a tree. Its motor vibrated those arms at high speeds so they could shake the tree violently. Its net sat suspended just beneath the lowest branches. As the machine buzzed and roared, a hundred ripe oranges fell from the branches to land in the net below — a hundred ripe oranges that could feed and satisfy a hundred people. That machine was carefully designed to release the fruit from the tree — to release it by shaking.
The nets filled with oranges remind me of something the apostle Paul once wrote about times of trial and tribulation, of deep sorrow and loss. He contended that Christians must be prepared to be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and even struck down — a collection of words meant to display the variety of ways in which God may call us to suffer (2 Corinthians 4:8–9).
The God who is sovereign over all things may lead us into times and contexts that are deeply painful. Yet we can be confident that our suffering is never arbitrary and never meaningless, for God always has a purpose in mind. Hence, Paul says more: we will be “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” For those in Christ, God’s purpose is never to harm us and never to ruin us.
So what is God’s purpose in our suffering? Why does God sometimes lead us away from the green pastures and still waters to call us instead to follow him into deep and dark valleys (Psalm 23)? These were questions that were much on my mind in the days, weeks, and months following the Lord’s decision to call my son to himself.
(Note: this article was commissioned by Desiring God and posted to their site last month)
God Left Us Sonless
Nick, age 20, was at seminary and taking a break from his studies to play a game with a group of his friends when, in an instant, his heart stopped, his body fell to the ground, and his soul went to heaven. His friends tried to revive him, a passing doctor tried to revive him, responding paramedics and emergency-room doctors tried to revive him. But it was to no avail. God had called him home. And since God had summoned him to heaven, there was no doctor, no medication, and no procedure that could keep my son here on earth.
I don’t know why God determined that Nick would live so short a life, why he would leave this world with so little accomplished and so much left undone. I don’t know why God determined to leave Aileen and me sonless, Abby and Michaela brotherless, Ryn fiancéless and ultimately husbandless. I don’t know why God did it — why God exercised his sovereignty in taking away a young man who was so dearly loved, who was so committed to serving Jesus, and who had so much promise. But I don’t need to know, for, as Moses said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
While I don’t know why God did it, I am already beginning to understand how God is using it.
Lamentation Without Resentment
On the streets of Madrid, a machine shakes the orange trees to cause them to release their fruit. It shakes them violently, shakes them so hard that it almost looks as if the branches must snap, as if the trunk must splinter, as if the entire tree must be uprooted. Yet this is the way it must be done, for the delicious fruit is connected tightly to the inedible branches. And the moment the machine has collected the fruit, I observe, it ceases its shaking, it furls up its net, it withdraws its arms, and it backs away, leaving the tree healthy and well, prepared to bear yet another harvest.
And just like that machine shook the orange tree, Nick’s death has shaken me and shaken my family and shaken my church and shaken Nick’s friends and shaken his school — shaken us to our very core. Yet this shaking, though it has been violent and exceedingly painful, has not caused us to break. We have raised our voices in lamentation, but never in rebellion. We have raised hands of worship, but never fists of rage. We have asked questions, but have never expressed resentment.
To the contrary, as I look at those who love Nick most, I see them displaying fresh evidences of God’s grace. I see them growing in love for God, in the joy of their salvation, in the peace of the gospel, in their patience with God’s purposes, in kindness toward others, in the goodness of personal holiness, in faithfulness to all God has called them to, in gentleness with other people’s sins and foibles, and in that rare, blessed virtue of self-control. I see them bearing the precious fruit of the Spirit as never before (Galatians 5:22–23).
Shaken to Bear Fruit
Just as the fruit of the tree clings tightly to the branch, the evil within us clings tightly to the good, the vices to the virtues, the immoral to the upright. God does not mean to harm us when he shakes us, but simply to release the fruit — to do what is necessary to separate what is earthly from what is heavenly, what dishonors him from what delights his heart.
As I consider my wife, as I consider my girls, as I consider Nick’s precious fiancée, as I consider his friends and fellow church members, I see that they have been deeply shaken by his death — shaken by God’s sovereign hand. But I see as well that they have been shaken for a beautiful purpose. They have been shaken to bear fruit.