This week on The Straight Truth Podcast, host Dr. Josh Philpot and Dr. Richard Caldwell's topic of discussion is the culture's mass confusion and distortion of masculinity and femininity. Culture today is fast-paced in its ongoing absurdities, perversions, and insanities relating to masculinity and femininity. The culture has no idea what it means to live as a man and what it means to live as a woman. But we are also seeing where some professing believers may not either. Some professing believers, in the name of Christ, have responded to this confusing chaos with versions of masculinity and femininity that do not match the Scriptures. God tells us in His word that He made us in His image. He made us male and female, and in these God-given two genders, male and female, we are meant to give full expression to His image. How can Christians best arm themselves to stand firm on biblical masculinity and femininity? What are some things Christians need to be mindful and aware of as we fight against perversions of God’s design? Dr. Caldwell says that one thing we must be careful of doing in this, and in all realms, is to respond to legitimate spiritual problems with fleshly answers. There is no doubt that biblical godly masculinity and femininity are under attack. The rise of feminism, says Dr. Caldwell, has led to a perversion of what it means to be masculine and feminine. We even see these descriptions unhelpfully being distorted by those who profess Christ. Which, in turn, has led to wrong versions of the husband-and-wife relationship. None of these descriptions accurately match up with the Scriptures. While we can say that culture and tradition, in times past, have revealed some aspects of biblical masculinity and femininity, this is not true today. Christians cannot learn the qualities and characteristics that reflect biblical masculinity and femininity from the culture, tradition, or traditional understandings of the past even. To be masculine does not require a man to grow a beard, drink beer, smoke cigars, and be a hunter-warrior type. To be feminine does not mean that a woman never cuts her hair, only wears dresses, and is a wimpy-wilty-wallflower. Our concepts of godly masculinity and femininity need to come from the Scriptures. In the Bible, there are men and women from whom we can learn godly examples of masculinity and femininity. However, none of these are perfect; the chief, pre-eminent and perfect example is our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone portrays the perfect godly character and qualities that honors and glorifies God. Some illustrations that Dr. Caldwell discusses are - wisdom, humility, a submissive heart, the supreme demonstration of husbandry love, courageous truthfulness, compassion, and an unwillingness to compromise truth for false unity. In Christ, we see a supernatural kind of strength and tenderness. The foremost example is that He did not stand up to fight nor have His servants fight for Him. Instead, He willingly subjected Himself to mistreatment for the sake of saving our souls. It is to Him we must ultimately look for the godly example of how we are to live out our lives as men and women. He is the model for all of us, both male and female. Being masculine and feminine requires us to look to Jesus and that we emulate the character aspects that He displays. Therefore, as we seek to glorify and honor God in our masculinity and femininity, we must look away from traditions and those examples from the past thought to be biblical and godly. However, we must also turn away from those who profess Christ that proffer and promote characteristics and qualities that don’t align with God’s standards. We must look to the Word of God alone; it is in this manner only that we will be equipped to fulfill God’s design and purpose for our lives as male and female.