On January 14th, 2021, The Daily Wire released its first movie. As Christian Toto pointed out, the reviews from the leftist press were vitriolic. To be a conservative, after all, is to assume that you have no place in the culture. To whatever modicum you violate that, the “gatekeepers” are there to remind you.

It was also of no surprise that most of their invective had nothing to do with the film. The pot shots were at the Daily Wire, or any one of its public personalities.

What Toto found even more interesting, was the response from media outlets on the right.

Nothing. Dead air. Pure silence.

If you read a major conservative outlet, you wouldn’t know this movie existed. You’d have to find out somewhere else. At least the haters were kind enough to acknowledge the film’s existence.

In this, unfortunately, we find an accompanying reality to the previous one. To be a conservative or a Christian, is to all too often, accept your place as irrelevant to your culture.

To be fair to these outlets, this isn’t an attempt to blame them. There is nothing out there that indicates that this was some malicious attempt on their part. This isn’t solely a problem with those outlets. It’s an issue endemic in the minds of those who live with traditional principles.

We have abandoned the culture. We have developed the ability to make it an afterthought. To the extent that it is ever-present in our lives, we treat is as secondary to the things that we hold dear in our lives. We have beliefs, but how those beliefs play out in everyday life never seems to sink in. This, however, has created a gap. A void into which a pseudo-reality of sorts has now come to define our culture.

How this happened, of course, is a daunting exercise that will require many minds, and much time to tackle. To a large extent, this outlet will be used to conduct such an exercise. But even doing that, must come in pursuit of a higher ideal in which to steer the culture. And in so doing, all the joys and all the pain of searching for the truth must be relevant to us. It is after all, relevant to God. It has gone on long enough, and To understand this, is to understand the point of The City Gate.

The City Gate is a response to a gap within the culture. The name, a reference to Christ himself (Rev 22:14), is also a testament to our mission. That the pursuit of truth is the main purpose of man on earth. That this pursuit does not only exist within the abstract barriers of theory, and sermons. It must play out in the concrete atmosphere of day to day life. It is an establishment that the truth is not only spoken, enacted. It defines the course of man’s path, and so cannot be cast aside.

We are here to show that the basic principles of our belief, makes the best parts of our culture. That if our ultimate pursuit is the truth, then the things we enjoy, are richer within the truth. Even the ultimate gift to man, love, cannot come to life in a world without truth. Or in other words, in a world outside of reality. Love itself only abides within the truth.

We come at this, understanding and empathizing with those who left. We come at this, identifying with the things they identify with. The adherence to the eternal things. Love, life, the cause of liberty, etc.

Here, we are not worried about what is “Christian” art. We are more concerned about what the truth is. Not because the truth is antonymous to our Christian faith. It is because since the Christian faith is subject to the truth, then the truth must define it. It is not about “Christian art,” or any other artificially labeled construct. So those confines for us are gone. We’ll seek the truth. Everything else falls into place after that.

To be clear. This is not a compromise, or a watering down of the faith, or any of its underpinnings. It is simply an acknowledgment of its overarching nature. It is also an unvarnished recognition of the ultimate purpose of man since the fall. To enter the city by the gates (Christ himself) is the ultimate end of our faith. To pursue that is to pursue the truth. We pursue that because Christ (the gates) is the ultimate embodiment of the truth. To walk the path to the city gates is to align more and more with him.

St. Augustin once points out:
“…all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now, these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also —that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life — we must take and turn to a Christian use.”

The point here, of course, is that Egyptian gold is ultimately just gold, like every other gold. It has no inherent goodness or evil infused within it. It is a creation of the Lord and isn’t less so just because it happens to be located in Egypt.

What the Christian must do with the goodness he sees around him, is to constantly walk that same gauntlet. To recognize as he treads anywhere, even in heathen lands, that the gold is his for the taking. To leave no quarter to the false notion that the fullness of the earth is not his to claim. In a sense, to snatch the gold from the heathen lands, whose evil he must still abhor. To do these things of course, without staying stagnant in such land. Egypt after all is to be left behind. Just not the gold in it.

Welcome to The City Gate. Where the truth, after all, is that the gold is not created by Egypt.

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