Have you ever stopped and thought how different America might be if certain events had turned out differently?

What if the colonists had lost the American Revolution? What if the Confederacy had prevailed against the Union Army? What if President Kennedy had survived the assassin’s bullet — or President Reagan had not?

At the core of these “what if?” questions is an ageless and fundamental curiosity. Do our choices in life really matter — or is God behind the curtain pulling all the strings?

Or put more bluntly: Is it God or is it man who is in the middle of all things?

Or could it be that yes, God is in charge, but as His servants, our actions do matter and have consequences?

In many ways, the answers to these speculative and theological questions are what’s behind a new movie released last week, The American Miracle: Our Nation is No Accident.

This patriotic study boasts an impressive cast: Pat Boone, Kevin Sorbo, Nicole C. Mullen, Cameron Arnett, and James Arnold Taylor.

Incidentally, Boone and Sorbo both play Thomas Jefferson at his various ages of life. It’s a screenplay adapted from a book of the same name by Michael Medved, the syndicated radio host and author.

“I wrote The American Miracle because I had become convinced, studying American history, that the country was different and special,” Medved recently shared.

From infanticide to gender sterilization, history is repeating itself. The church must once again be the world’s fiercest protector of children.

“Pre-Christian Rome” was a world of child victimization.

That’s what the early Christ-following church was born into. Abortion, infanticide, child castration, selling children, and child sexual abuse were common.

Infant exposure, the practice of discarding illegitimate, disabled, or simply female babies, was routine. Children from poor families could be sold into labor or sexual exploitation. Eunuchs castrated in childhood, were in demand.

Archaeologists often identify ancient brothels by the discovery of mass graves filled with male infants discarded for lacking market value.

Into this darkness came the gospel.

Jesus Christ, who entered the world as a vulnerable infant, elevated the value of children. He welcomed them, blessed them, warned against causing them harm, and instructed His followers to become like them.

The Apostle Paul even acknowledged the developmental differences of childhood.

This was such a radical shift that some historians argue Christianity invented the idea of childhood by recognizing children’s full humanity and worth.

And Christians lived out this new vision. They opposed abortion.

The hard-fought battle to protect the rights of pregnant mothers and their preborn babies continued this month in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Treto.

NIFLA disputes an Illinois law that forces pro-life pregnancy resource centers to refer pregnant women for abortions, arguing it violates their right to free speech.

Illinois courts have hotly debated the free speech rights of pregnancy resource centers for some seven years.

Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) appealed NIFLA’s case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit on May 29 following an April court ruling declaring that forcing pro-life pregnancy centers to refer their clients for abortions does not violate speech or conscience rights. 

In the same ruling, however, the court permanently blocked an Illinois law requiring pro-life pregnancy resource centers to promote abortion and its possible “benefits.”

Judges found the law an unconstitutional infringement on the pregnancy centers’ freedom of speech — a stark contradiction to their previous assessment of pregnancy resource centers’ free speech rights.

“No one should be forced to express a message that violates their convictions, and compelling people to refer others for abortions does that,” said ADF Senior Counsel Erin Hawley. She continued, “The U.S. Supreme Court held in NIFLA v. Becerra that forcing people to promote abortion is unconstitutional.”

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. The tempestuous winds of our culture frequently leave Christians of all ages confused, exhausted and searching for answers.

The Colson Center offers beleaguered believers a lifeline through the Identity Project — a library of more than 200 videos from Christian experts on cultural topics from gender ideology to deconstruction.

As of today, it’s all totally free.

The Colson Center equips Christians to engage culture with truth and love. The Identity Project, which began in 2023, is founded on the idea that the moral problems facing our society are born of a deep identity crisis.

Identity has to do with what it means to be human, John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and a Daily Citizen contributor, prefaced at an event celebrating the project’s free launch. But trying to understand our identity without a biblical foundation is like running through quicksand.

“That’s why every video in the Identity Project is predicated on that biblical foundation,” Stonestreet explained, continuing:

“The videos begin with that theological grounding about what the image of God is, what the image of God implies and how the image of God has grounded concepts like human rights and human dignity.”

“Then, [the videos] apply this cultural framework to the toughest questions of our day.”