Purity of Water, Air, and Land

I think the next area we’ve had difficulty in is that of the waste of pollution. My generation was productive and even inspired in the field of invention. We saw the immediate needs of the population and satisfied those needs in an impressive fashion. However, our genius may have been premature on many occasions. We forgot, in our excitement, the total effects of these inventions compiled after years of use. Merely from looking at our polluted air and rivers we come to realize that possibly we implemented in haste without looking to the future. My generation gratified those immediate needs through all sorts of mechanical innovations to produce comfort. But in so doing, we forgot and possibly indelibly marked the sweet, quiet, natural comforts of this world that God has placed for us. My son, after coming back to Utah—I’m sure he couldn’t have done this in the East—thought it wise to write a little poem on air and pollution...

Air

"Air comes from a complicated

chemical occurrence

And continues to bless us

with ceaseless abundance.

But what if one day

The air left with rain,

How could we convince it

To come back again?

The air would complain,

“Why,

you creatures must hate me.

There’s smoke and smog

As far as you can see,

And people don’t care

Enough to stop smoking.

Just one cigarette

Depresses me choking.”

And nobody stops a moment to ponder

 If enough air exists in expanses out yonder. 

Up buildings,

down trees,

Air comes with the breeze.

Life is forever

An end?

Oh, never.

Why look at me,

I’m breathing with ease.

“There ought to be laws,”

says a lawyer.

“There ought to be ways,”

says a chemist.

“Where are the clean rivers?”

asks Tom Sawyer.

“Why,

the plants are all dying,”

claims a botanist.

A clean river formed the Grand Canyon. 

Tall trees were chopped by Paul Bunyan. 

You and I ignited this war

The moment

we decided to pour

The wastes of the day

On the world

in a reckless way.

Why,

you can’t see the sun anymore.

And nobody stops a moment to ponder

If enough air exists in expanses out yonder.

Up buildings,

down trees,

Air comes with the breeze.

Life is forever

An end?

Oh, never.

Why look at me,

I’m breathing with ease.

I think the whole problem 

Stems from the fact

That air is abundant,

Too abundant to lack.

It’s always been there

 Since the world was created, 

But a wholesome-type air 

Will soon be outdated.

And nobody stops a moment to ponder

If enough air exists in expanses out yonder.

Up buildings,

down trees,

Air comes with the breeze.

Life is forever

An end?

Oh, never.

Why look at me,

I’m breathing with ease."

...

When we consider pollution, again we must ask the question: For what purpose is this waste?

"Here are the elements. They are not made in vain, but are made for the benefit, comfort, convenience and happiness of God’s children."

“Not many generations will pass away before the days of man will again return. But it will take generations to entirely eradicate the influences of deleterious substances. This must be done before we can attain our paradisiacal state.”

"You are here commencing anew. The soil, the air, the water are all pure and healthy. Do not suffer them to become polluted with wickedness. Strive to preserve the elements from being contaminated by the filthy, wicked conduct and sayings of those who pervert the intelligence God has bestowed upon the human family."

"What constitutes health, wealth, joy, and peace? In the first place, good pure air is the greatest sustainer of animal life."

"Keep your valley pure, keep your towns as pure as you possibly can, keep your hearts pure, and labour what you can consistently, but not so as to injure yourselves. Be faithful in your religion. Be full of love and kindness towards each other."

[Thomas G. Alexander writes:] "President Smith was alarmed over the damage to mountain watersheds by unrestricted logging and grazing. In a special general priesthood meeting held on April 7, 1902, he put before the body of the priesthood a vote to withdraw all public lands above Utah towns in or to protect them from damage."

“I believe in beauty. The earth in its pristine beauty is an expression of the nature of its Creator . . . I believe in the beauty of nature—the flowers, the fruit, the sky, the peaks and the plains from which they rise. I see and believe in the beauty of animals . . . I believe in beauty—the beauty of God's unspoiled creations, the beauty of his sons and daughters who walk without whimpering, meeting the challenges of each new day.”

"The Church has urged its members to be efficient users of our resources and to avoid waste and pollution, and to clean up their own immediate environment, or that over which they have control . . . We have made an appeal to all Church members to clean up their premises, to plant gardens and trees, and then to use efficiently what they can grow. We have found that Church members have responded well to this appeal, thus becoming more self-reliant and responsibly concerned for their neighbors and their environment."

"Irreverence for God, of life, and for our fellowmen takes the form of things like littering, heedless strip-mining, pollution of water and air.  But these are, after all, outward expressions of the inner man."

“Surely you can see the inconsistency in the individual who insists that we be good stewards and not pollute our environment, and yet who is unscrupulous in his personal life. Again, physical and spiritual laws are interrelated. Pollution of one's environment and moral impurity both rest on a life-style which partakes of a philosophy of ‘eat, drink, and be merry’—gouge and grab now, without regard to the consequences. Both violate the spirit of stewardship for which we will stand accountable.”

“Stewardship in the Church is a very important matter. The Lord has mentioned it in the revelations. (See D&C 59; 104.) We are stewards over these earthly blessings which the Lord has provided, those of us who have this soil and this water. We have no moral latitude, it seems to me. In fact, we are morally obligated to turn this land over to those who succeed us—not drained of its fertility but improved in quality, in productivity, and in usefulness for future generations.”

"[W]e are morally obligated to turn this land over to those who succeed us—not drained of its fertility, but improved in quality, in productivity, and in usefulness for future generations. I am sure our Heavenly Father expects us to use these precious natural resources wisely, unselfishly, and effectively—both our soil and our water"

"It is terribly important that we preserve and improve the great natural resources with which the God of heaven has so richly blessed us, that we may not follow the experience of some other nations that have come and gone because of the mismanagement of their natural and God-given resources."

"It is not likely that someone who does not love his neighbor will be concerned with his adverse impact on the environment . . . If there is disregard for oneself, there will be disregard for one's neighbor. If there is no reverence for life itself, there is apt to be little reverence for the resources God has given man. The outward expressions of irreverence for life and for fellowmen often take the form of heedless pollution of both air and water. But are these not expressions of the inner man? You are among those who must undertake the task of alerting mankind to problems with regard to his physical environment, but do you not see that if you attempt to do this without giving heed to the spiritual law involved, you undertake an impossible task."

"Sinning against the land is as much a sin as many of those we talk most about. I have been tempted for some time to make a similar theme my own at one of the general conferences. Our people need to know it."

"This country was beautiful when the Pioneers first came. It was virgin territory. The hills, the streams, the forests and the plains were lovely, just as nature always is until marred by the hand of man."

"We hear much about cleaning up the physical environment—air, water, and other essentials that are being polluted in a way that is poisoning the physical environment for all of us. We may choose to join in such efforts. But we who are responsible to push back against the world should be at least equally concerned about forces that are poisoning the moral environment. I refer to such moral pollutions as pornography. I also refer to language that pollutes public communications with profanity, vulgarity, and morally degrading coarseness. Push back against these kinds of pollutions also. "In all of these efforts, we can trust in the great promises of the Lord. He has taught us, 'If ye are prepared ye shall not fear' (D&C 38:30). He has also taught us that He does not ask anything of us except He prepares the way for us to accomplish it (see 1 Nephi 3:7). He has shown us that while He may not immediately answer our prayers for relief, He will strengthen us to bear the burdens placed upon us (see Mosiah 24:14–15)."

"Many of you have seen the spiritual and temporal pollutions, scars, and damage wrought by man upon this earth and well may we all chime in with Enoch and ask ourselves: will we not have compassion upon the earth? Or are we too caught up in our personal pursuits and desires?"

"In the Book of Mormon, it is prophesied that in the latter-days there would be 'fires, tempests, and vapors of smoke . . . and . . . great pollutions upon the face of the earth,' and that such conditions would be coupled with 'murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceiving, and whoredoms, and all manner of abominations; when there shall be many who will say, Do this, or do that, and it mattereth not.' [Mormon 8:29-31] According to LDS scripture, there is a corollary between the selfish, materialistic man out to hoard money, material possessions, and/or the man with irreverence for life—and pollutions (spiritual or temporal) upon the face of the earth."

"As the human soul is thus changed, the environment is better cared for. The doctrine and commandments of God lead us beyond the suffocating, self-limiting weight of selfishness, the blinding press of self-gratification or aggrandizement. The gospel of Jesus Christ helps us think beyond ourselves, to think of the earth and all life given by God and to think of others now and in future generations, rather than pursue the immediate vindication of our personal desires or avowed rights. If I pursue a selfish, irreverent course, I pursue a course that gives license to despoil the earth, for pollution, damage, and waste are almost always the product of selfishness or irreverence. To the degree that religion teaches reverence for God, for His creations, for life, and for our fellowman, it will teach us to care for the environment. In short, the state of the human soul and the environment are interconnected, each affects and influences the other."

"According to LDS scripture, there is a corollary between the selfish, materialistic man out to hoard money, material possessions, and/or the man with irreverence for life—and pollutions (spiritual or temporal) upon the face of the earth."

"When He [Christ] interviews us, I feel certain that one of His questions will, in essence, be the following: 'What have you done with the earth which my Father and I gave you as a home? Have you cherished and protected it? Have you dressed it and kept it, as your father Adam was commanded to do? Or have you laid waste to it, defiled its waters, destroyed its fertile lands, befouled its life-giving air?' To those questions, I fear there are many, even among those who aspire to become a Zion people, who will hang their heads in shame. The earth groans under the insults inflicted upon it."

“Those who live upon this land, or any other that God gives to His people, have peculiar promises made to them. Then do not pollute this land, nor pollute yourselves or your fellow creatures, but let us keep ourselves pure and clean.”

Enoch looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying: Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me?

"A far better gift than cash handouts to our nature-loving Boy Scouts, and school children, and to the freedom-loving citizens attending the festival in July, would be 'the clear blue sky [arching] over the values of the free,' the clearer the freer, including freedom from respiratory complications in later life. But of course there is one serious drawback to that. The clear blue skies cost much more than the highly publicized handouts."

"He contrasts the situation with that of the Latter-day Saints 'spreading themselves on the face of the earth, and carefully cultivating it,' invigorated by 'the pure, bracing air, [and with it] health.'”

"All nature smiles, and teems with health and brightness and fragrance, where you are, but over the valley before you rests an awful, impenetrable, dark, black cloud, . . . approximating to a realization of your ideal of the 'dark valley of the shadow of death.' . . . You walk down the hillside, and, as you enter the thick, dark cloud, . . . you feel no more the invigorating influences [of the sun], . . . a sense of oppressiveness falls upon you, and you realize, to your unmistakable discomfort, that the darkness around [you] can not only be seen, but felt and tasted. Suddenly, to your great astonishment, you discover that this dreary spot is inhabited by human beings!"

"The most famous passage relevant to our subject is from another medieval epic, the opening refrain from Macbeth: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.' Shakespeare must have got the idea from the Bible, which calls Satan the Prince of the Air, but also the Prince of Darkness—that kind of air."

"Long ago, Eusebius, called the father of church history, tells of an early Christian tradition that the evil spirits which constantly seek to defile and corrupt human society 'move about in thick polluted air,' as a most fitting environment for their work. In a passage from a famous Hermetic work, the Koreø Kosmu (excerpt 23), the Air complains to the Creator, 'O Master, I myself am made thick and polluted, and by the stench of dead things from the dump I reek to heaven, so that I breed sickness, and have ceased to be wholesome; and when I look down from above I see things which are too awful to behold.'”

"Without being able to tell exactly why, we take immediate offense at such statements, made by men in high positions, as 'I do not believe in conservation for conservation’s sake,' or 'I do not believe in clean water for the sake of clean water.' But we soon learn that our shocked first reaction is a healthy one; when the forest is reduced to the now proverbial one redwood, it is too late. What prevents such a catastrophe is not the logic of survival but the feelings of wrongness."

"Why should the enemy seek to pollute? There was an early Christian teaching, reported by Eusebius, that the evil spirits, being forever deprived of physical bodies, constantly go about in the world jealously seeking to defile and corrupt such bodies, glorying in foulness and putrefaction as they 'move about in thick, polluted air,' and make charnel houses and garbage dumps their favorite haunts"

"I have often thought that in our day and age—and I believe that there is some precedence in the scriptures for this, such as references to pollution in the last days and so on—one of the areas at which we could look seriously and about which we could feel good is this area of cleaning up our environment. I have a feeling that pollution is going to get worse and that there are going to be a lot of jobs in this area. I am convinced that the Lord is against pollution. He is against perversion. He is against prostitution—and prostitution has a much broader meaning than just its limited sexual sense; it really means perverting something from its correct use to an incorrect use. I would think that prostitution and pollution and perversion are all about the same, and God is against such things. How we treat him is reflected in how we treat others who are his children, and how we treat the elements and other forms of life on this earth, which are his. He created them. If there were one safe area in which to look for a livelihood, I think it would be in this area. I do not know whether this would be your avocation or not, but you might think about it. I am convinced in my own mind that we have not really fulfilled our mission in life as individuals or as a Church until we have demonstrated and shown as much advancement in other areas as we have in theology. We know how government ought to be, we know how society ought to be, we know what cleanliness ought to be, we know what the environment really should be; we should lead out in these areas. For instance, we recognize that we have environmental problems. I am not sure what the answer is, but I do not think the answer is what some “environmentalists” think it is—that is, to stop whatever we are doing—because we as a race must produce. I am not sure how to do it, but I am sure that there is a right way; we just need to discover it. I do not believe that the Lord is pleased with the constant corruption and pollution we so willingly endure—not just spiritually, but physically—to achieve some of our goals. I personally cannot help but believe that there is a better way. I cannot help but feel that God knows how to transform all of these base materials into useful tools without all the choking clouds of dust and the stench of pollution in our rivers and streams. He put our resources here, he put us here, and he knows what we need. He knows what is here and how to get things done. I do not think that he is against energy. I think that he is for all of these things, and wants us to use them in the proper way to get around, do his work, and build up his kingdom. But my faith is that there is a better way than we now know. He wants us to use the elements—to mold them for our use—but in a different way. Now should that not be something that you students here at BYU could figure out—with the Lord’s help? (And who should be closer to him than you?) We have talked about missions for individuals, and we are all aware of the Church mission. In my mind, BYU, as part of the Church, should become the pollution control center of the world—not only spiritually, but physically. I feel that this is important. We take the gospel to all the world in a spiritual way; we ought to do it in other ways, also . . . I guess we could say that, as far as our life’s mission is concerned, both spiritually and physically, we could feel good about doing away with pollution and putting purity in its place. That is a real challenge and is something that we should do. You at this University should be the leaders in doing it."

"As such, from both a scientific and spiritual perspective, environmental science and LDS theology both teach that if we live and consume with no respect for earth's delicate balance, we endanger the earth and ourselves."

"Environmentalism fits within a social justice movement as it focuses on the distribution of benefits and burdens of modern economic and industrial life. Burdens such as pollution and toxic wastes are not distributed randomly or equally but disproportionately affect low income communities."

"The livestock industry is 'by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land,' a leading contributor to deforestation and land degradation, and a major factor in the reduction of biodiversity. And livestock produce 130 times more waste in the US than humans do, leading to widespread pollution of land and water."

"With the population explosion, the carcinoma of planless urbanism, the new geological deposits of sewage and garbage, surely no creature other than man has ever managed to foul its nest in such short order."

"Our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us . . . This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor . . . "

“Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.”

"I believe that pollution and environmental deterioration are primarily moral and spiritual problems, rather than problems of technology. Technology is mindless—a double-edged sword that will either produce or reduce pollution as man wills it. The prevalence of pollution stems from a lack of proper knowledge and understanding of the real purpose of life and of man’s place in the eternal plan provided by a loving Father in heaven."

"Our environment has been tragically exploited and abused. Although not yet irretrievably befouled, it has deteriorated in too many ways, and a great deal of hard work and effort is required to protect it and repair the damage done by neglect, indifference, and misplaced priorities. However, I am optimistic that man will in fact draw back from the edge of the pit, that he will recognize his vulnerability, and that he will work to reorganize his priorities and motivations."

"And there are valuable lessons to be learned from the discovery and control of this potential health hazard. First, pollution may affect biological systems hundreds of miles from the source of the pollution itself. High mercury levels in fish in Lake Winnipeg may have resulted from practices followed by a single industrial plant in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, hundreds of miles up the Saskatchewan River."

"[T]he ocean is not an inexhaustible reservoir that can be polluted forever without deleterious effects on biological systems."

Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.

So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.

Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness.

For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as it becometh saints;

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience.

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.

Nevertheless, if they pollute their inheritances they shall be thrown down; for I will not spare them if they pollute their inheritances.

But verily I say unto you, I have decreed that your brethren which have been scattered shall return to the lands of their inheritances, and shall build up the waste places of Zion.

And they came to a land, yea, even a very beautiful and pleasant land, a land of pure water.

And again, he saith: If my people shall sow filthiness they shall reap the chaff thereof in the whirlwind; and the effect thereof is poison.

I say unto you, that the man that doeth this, the same cometh out in open rebellion against God; therefore he listeth to obey the evil spirit, and becometh an enemy to all righteousness; therefore, the Lord has no place in him, for he dwelleth not in unholy temples.

And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.

And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins; for I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore, how can ye be saved, except ye inherit the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins.

Wherefore, if ye have sought to do wickedly in the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment-seat of God; and no unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever.