Pollution has become a major problem in America. In many parts of the country man has so befouled the air and water that he finds himself confronted by the problem of a self-induced calamity.
Belatedly, our nation is taking vigorous steps to reduce or eliminate the causes of pollution. This action must be drastic and thorough.
By-products of industrial and technological progress are the major causes of our pollution problem. I was recently driving on a famous mountain parkway. The views were breathtaking, but in two valleys below, far removed from any city, there were modern factories, each employing hundreds of the residents of surrounding communities. From both of the high stacks there poured a greyish-yellow smoke, covering the valleys for miles. A gentle breeze was spreading this polluting vapor so that the air all the inhabitants of that area must breathe was seriously contaminated.
Only a day later I was driving by a small river that once had given pleasure to many as a site for boating, swimming, and fishing. The water was the color of strong tea, and on its surface there floated a thick scum from detergents, causing the stream to resemble an open sewer.
Commerce and normal travel also make their contribution to pollution—the contrails of high-flying jets, smoke and gases from trains, and the ever increasing problem of combustion engines with their low-level contamination of the air we breathe.
Our ability to invent and perfect things useful to modern living has not yet extended to the point where we can eliminate the by-products that adversely affect elements essential to life itself.
In addition, there is man’s proclivity to add to his problems willfully by filling his lungs with irritants.
The problem of contamination of the elements essential to life through our carelessness, insensitivity, and ineptness is one that has developed slowly. Only since the end results have become alarmingly obvious have we as a people become aroused enough to look past the effects and attack the causes.
But there is a far more serious problem of pollution in America that we have not yet begun to cope with. We are confronted with many sources of pollution of the heart and mind, and so far we are doing little to prevent this open sewer of immorality from contaminating a new generation.
Much “literature” today is, generally speaking, nothing less than intellectual, moral, and spiritual garbage—and the present generation is feeding on it. This “literature” ignores or rejects the standards of decency recognized, though not always practiced, by a past generation. The resulting pollution of the mind subverts both thoughts and deeds and caters to the lusts of the flesh, which end in death.
I am writing about what exists, not what may occur in the future. The theme of the best-sellers today is usually immorality—justified and made attractive. And even in books that do not cater to prurience there is usually an approach to life and its problems that ignores God and has as its inevitable “fallout” in the mind of the reader either a philosophical hopelessness or a false sense of man’s ability to solve his problems without God.
The wholesome and inspiring modern novel is as rare today as the pure air and snow-fed streams of the High Rockies. What most people are now reading is sure to undermine moral and spiritual concepts, without which no man can see God.
This pollution of the mind and spirit is being accelerated at an almost unbelievable degree by “daring” “adult” movies and plays that vie with one another to see how far they can go. Under the guise of realism they cater to lust and moral degeneracy. After witnessing one such play, a New York newspaper critic ended his review with, “After this what can there be for an encore?”
There is yet another area where the pollution of American life is rampant. This is the colleges and universities where God is ruled out of his universe and where his Word, if mentioned at all, is scorned as “irrelevant” to modern man and the world in which he lives.
Godless professors, under the guise of “academic freedom” and the protection of tenure, reduce knowledge to that which can be academically demonstrated or theoretically assumed while at the same time they reject the ultimate in wisdom—God’s revelation of himself. The end result of this pollution of the intellectual stream is educated pagans.
Forbidden, or unwilling, to teach true religion, many of these professors have no compunction against teaching things contrary to the Christian faith, while others are guilty of willfully attempting to destroy simple faith in God and his Word wherever they may find it. This is true in many church-related colleges as well as in state-supported institutions. (One need not ask which of the two is the more reprehensible.)
The pollution of human minds is hastened by those who under the guise of a “search for truth” willfully ignore or reject the One who is Truth. The Apostle Paul speaks of blind leaders of the blind, “men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith” who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).
The person and work of Christ are held in question by these seekers for “truth.” The message and mission of the Church are distorted. There is confusion over what is Caesar’s and what is God’s, over the rightful place of citizenship and how the Christian should live (whether in and of the world, or in but not of the world). These “blind leaders” are uncertain about heaven and reject the reality of hell. And the one unerring source of truth—the Bible—is rejected or interpreted away.
From these things that contaminate mind, spirit, intellect, and body, we turn to the Christ revealed in the Scriptures—contemplating with joy his supernatural life, death, and resurrection. In the Scriptures we are told how we may avoid the corrupting influences of life: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).
Thank God there is a way of escape: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:3, 4).
L. NELSON BELL
