An Ominous Sign for Religious Liberty

We finished our book club last week by looking at John Piper's final chapter in Desiring God, "Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism." In that discussion, I mentioned that we face relatively light persecution at this point but that it seemed that would probably not remain the case. I mentioned that religious liberty is waning in our country. I wanted to mention one recent example.

Why talk about this?
The reason I point this out is to help us get serious about properly valuing Christ now. A shallow or superficial connection to Jesus is not going to stand up when difficulty for following him comes. Second, I want us to be aware of what is going on so we can argue for religious liberty in our spheres of influence. Finally, I want us to know what is going on so we can pray for others and our country. Notice, my reason is not so we will feel sorry for ourselves and bemoan how things used to be better. There is not really a place for that when we know we live under our sovereign God's care and love.

An example of a threat to religious liberty.
A privately held pharmacy in Washington state has effectively been shut down by that state's government because they refused to sell a drug used to kill unborn children in the womb. This refusal is out of their religious convictions that life begins at conception and this drug would effectively be killing one patient at the request of another. See the video below for more details:



In June, 2016, the US Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. This effectively means these pharmacists have lost the case and will no longer be able to run their pharmacy. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote, in dissent,

This case is an ominous sign...If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.

This is a sitting supreme court justice writing that we ought to be very concerned about what the Supreme court is doing in this case. What they are doing is ignoring the constitution, which is the document they are charged to apply to laws in this country.

The first amendment to the constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This has subtlety been changed, in regards to application of the law, to guarantee a freedom to privately hold beliefs and to worship as you want. That is, you can have your religious views and conscience as long as it doesn't affect the way you live, talk, or do business. However, this law actually guarantees more than that. It promises the right to exercise one's religion freely - not just to go to what church one wants to attend.

Let's spend some time thinking about the value of Jesus so that we will be ready to lose everything, if necessary, in order to have him.