The City Gates Begin At Home
Family Roles, Local Influence, and Christian Obligations in the Community, Church, and Home
A friend, Gabriel Hudelson, recently shared a reflection on Allie Beth Stuckey and the broader phenomenon of conservative female influencers. His point wasn’t merely that men should reclaim the public square, but that women should also be willing to yield it—that both sexes must return to their God-ordained spheres of responsibility. He warned that men have invited women onto battlefields never meant for them, and that women, like Deborah, should be ready to hand the reins back to faithful men.
There’s wisdom in that concern, but also a deeper problem it reveals—one that transcends gender altogether. It gets to the heart of Christian duty and, consequently, Christian Reconstruction.
Scale: The City
When the Bible speaks of the “city gates” (e.g., Proverbs 31:23) in relation to our personal operating theater, it is almost, if not entirely, always a local, definable community. The city gate was not the entire Kingdom of Israel or region of the Middle East. Even if it had been, Israel is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, with Ancient Israel’s population being roughly that of Houston, TX or Chicago, IL (2.3-2.7 million). This perspective helps us see the scale Scripture assumes when it speaks of civic responsibility. We are not omnipotent or omniscient, and the few God used to change kingdoms, were moved by God’s hand, not seekers of the role.
The point: save for a few exceptional men providentially placed in positions of influence, most of us have been entrusted to humble, yet equally important influences of our families’, our churches, and our local communities.
Local, Not Global
Our local stewardship is itself an act of covenantal faithfulness—obedience in the sphere God has assigned.
We would be wise to realize we’re called to be local influencers, not global influencers. Yet many of us mask delusions of grandeur and fame in verbiage like “the city gates” when the borders we’ve outlined for that city stretch far beyond our actual community. This is a folly to which both men and women fall victim when they grow unsatisfied with the obligations God has entrusted to them.
We often want to “change the world” but fail to realize our household is part of that world—and so are our churches, neighborhoods, and communities. These are the places we are uniquely positioned—and commanded—to influence.
The Real Reason
The reason many women avoid their household for positions of leadership (remember, see Gabriel’s post for full context) is the same reason men do: fear of confrontation. Engaging your household, church, community, and city means leaving the comfort zone, facing familiar people, and living with real consequences. It forces you to confront problems without easy answers. You must be raw, real, and transparent before those who truly know you—and that is scary. Influencing those physically adjacent to you as a Christian involves daily dying to self and a steady commitment to live a life of sacrifice. While there is no glamour, there is glory at the end.
When you choose to change the world outside your household, you don’t have to face the problems you can’t—or won’t—solve. If your marriage is a wreck, your children won’t listen, or your house is falling apart, you can ignore those problems and take on abstract ones that will always exist—yet still feel like you’re “doing something meaningful and productive.” This is a temptation common to both men and women, extending beyond the home to the church, the community, and yes, our local city gates.
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The Parable of the Talents
In Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:11-27, Jesus tells the Parable of the Talents. To summarize, a master entrusts his servants with varying sums before going on a journey. The amount of money given is entirely dependent on the will of the master, and not that of the servants. Some are given 5 talents (a type of coin) all the way down to a single talent. Most invest their coins to bring about profit for their master. When the master returns, the servants aren’t judged in relation to the other servants (i.e., the investment returns of the two talents isn’t judged according to the investment returns of the one with 5), but only based on how they invested what was entrusted to them.
Yet, wishing not to lose what was entrusted to him, the servant who was given a single talent, buried it in a hole, and when his master returned, his master was furious. Why? Because the master entrusted his servant with a gift, and the servant squandered what wasn’t his to waste.
In the same way, God does not ordain most of us to be kings or civic leaders, and contrary to the most popular memes, one can be a godly man without being such. However, one cannot be a godly man while neglecting his own family, whether his family is his wife, his wife and kids, or for the unmarried man, his father and mother, and beyond that, his church, and his community. That is, at most, the single coin God has put in your hand. And to every women, also, that coin has been put in her hand, and she has been called to faithfully serve.
You have been given a responsibility. Do not bury it in a hole.
Corem Dio
When we chase these delusions of king-dom at the expense of the kingdom God has already given us, we create the very soil that inspires our wives and daughters to seek solutions in the spaces we’ve abdicated. Women also, when they refuse to confront the problems in their household, but chase after abstract problems away from home, continue to foster the environment that allows broken households to persist. But, until Christians stop running from their problems, and take care of housekeeping, they will struggle to change the world.
When we reclaim faithfulness within the small and local, we begin restoring health to the broader sphere—households strengthening churches, churches strengthening communities, and communities shaping nations.
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AI Disclaimer: This article was written entirely by the author. Generative AI was used only for light editing. The City Gates graphic was AI-generated. I’m committed to producing genuine, original, and human-crafted work.
