Choosing a Future

As a parent, I spend a fair amount of time wondering what my kids are going to be like as they grow older.  Who will they marry?  What sort of vocations will they be drawn towards?  How will their personalities and abilities manifest themselves over the course of their lifetimes?  How can we as parents best encourage and equip them best for that future?

And how can we guide them to take into account the changing cultural landscape of our country?  How can we guide them so that they can live their lives consistent to their religious beliefs even in their vocations?  Increasingly, this is a question that every parent ought to be asking themselves and talking about with their kids.

Take for example, the job of pharmacist.  Seems like a straightforward enough job.  Fill prescriptions.  But what if you believe that abortion is wrong?  Should you be made to fill an abortifacient prescription?  Doctors traditionally have not been required to carry out certain procedures that contradicted their moral code – such as assisting a patient to commit suicide.  Likewise, pharmacists have long been protected from fulfilling prescriptions that violate their conscience.  The entire industry, in fact, revolves around the reality that not every pharmacy can stock or dispense every conceivable drug, and therefore they refer customers back and forth to each other for a variety of reasons.

But now, in the state of Washington, a pharmacist is no longer allowed to refer a customer to another pharmacy for religious or moral reasons.  If a customer walks into a pharmacy and asks to fill a prescription for the morning after pill, that pharmacist must fill the prescription.  At least, they must fill it unless there are other, non-religious, non-moral reasons for referring the customer to any number of other nearby pharmacies.  They can refer customers elsewhere for other reasons, just not for religious or moral ones.

Seems like a rather calculated directive aimed at quashing religious/moral objections.  Seems like something the US Supreme Court would be interested in hearing, since it directly affects First Amendment rights.  Except the Supreme Court has decided not to hear the appeal on this issue.  Much to the disappointment of some of the members of the court, such as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts.   Their dissent is very informative and worth 15 minutes of your time to read.

Increasingly, the question next generations of Christians will need to ask themselves is what sort of vocation can I fulfill that allows me to follow my religious convictions, that won’t require me to violate my conscience just to earn a living?  Traditional exemptions and exceptions are under attack and are likely to continue to be eliminated, and that needs to be taken into account in considering education decisions as well as job-hunting and career decisions.  Congregations might want to consider special workshops for parents and teens to discuss these sorts of things.  I would think it would be an appropriate topic for youth groups as well.

Is your congregation or ministry staff addressing these issues with your youth and parents?