Spiritual Pollutants
In his welcome address to the April 2020 General Conference President Nelson said: “From my office I have a front-row seat to watch the work taking place on the temple plaza. As I have watched workers dig out old tree roots, plumbing, wiring, and a leaky fountain, I have thought about the need for each of us to remove, with the Savior’s help, the old debris in our lives.”
This reminded me of a podcast. The episode was about some of the scientific studies that have been able to be conducted due to the COVID-19 restrictions. From studies on what people to when faced with extreme boredom to how the whales in Glacier Bay interact with each other without the presence of cruise ships. It was fascinating – you should listen. The one that intrigued me the most, and has relevance to the topic, was a study of air pollution conducted in India.
Living with unhealthy air
India is home to 35 of the top 50 most air polluted cities in the world. Not just bad air, but air that is unhealthy to breathe. I believe the first death from air pollution was recorded earlier this year.
A few weeks after the COVID-19 lock-down restrictions went into place, for the first time in decades the air was clean enough to see the snowcapped peaks of the Himalaya’s from Jalandhar, India. As the lock-down went on researchers were able to run experiments they couldn’t before without a sustained period of clean air.
One such study was conducted to answer the question: Where is the pollution being generated? Is it coming from sources inside the city? Or sources outside the city from farms to power plants and industrial buildings? When you don’t know where it is coming from it’s easy to say it’s a problem that cannot be solved. The conclusion: 50-70% of the pollution, in cities like Delhi, comes from sources inside the city.
Isn’t it the same with us – Spiritually?
How often have you and I been in a spiritual slump and concluded that it was created by an outside source without truly analyzing the situation? How often do we find through prayer and sincere study of our lives that it was really created from within? Thoughts I allowed to linger. Actions I did or did not do. Media I choose to consume. They all add up to spiritually polluted air until I find it hard to breathe.
The good news is that if we can pinpoint the source, we can do the work to clean up our air!
What pollutes our spiritual air?
In 4th Nephi we read the sad tale of a people who in 400 years went from “there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God” to violently killing each other. We can learn from what they allowed to enter their lives.
- Division. The first thing that happened was a group divided itself from the rest through rebellion. We are all sons and daughters of the Most High God – when we use other characteristics to define us and put ourselves into groups it dilutes our true nature and identity. It pollutes our vision of each other.
- Envy. Defined as a painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. There is no better example of this the social media “influencers” and the sway they have on society at large because of envy. Don’t we all want to be like the travel bloggers who don’t seem to work a day? Or look at our friends on social media and wonder why our lives can’t be so “perfect”. If we look at our lives through the lens of envy – we will never be satisfied.
- Pride. Some of the people in 4th Nephi started to believe they were better than others and “from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them.” It takes a truly humble people willingly work together to have all things common among them, it should not be about the one, but about growing together as a whole.
- Contention. The Lord has said “The spirit of contention is of the devil.” It is his greatest tool. When one is contending with another there is no exchange of thought and ideas with the intent to understand. There is just a spewing of opinion without really listening to each other. If we took the time to listen with the intent to understand and exchange ideas without contention, we can solve a whole lot of the world’s problems.
- Dishonesty. Lying, cheating and all forms of dishonesty breaks down trust between us.
- Lasciviousness or lust. This blinds us to each other – as people are only viewed as objects to be desired or rejected.
These things all have one thing in common – they divide us. And a people divided cannot form the type of community needed to “be of one heart”.
When you look around you, do you notice how prevalent all of these are in today’s world? When you look at the list, do you see some you need to work on? I do. Are there other things that can be added to the list? You bet; this is not an all-inclusive list. Through prayer and searching your heart the Lord can help direct you to what pollutants you are breathing in.
Lasting Change
My sister lives in Utah Valley, where inversion can be a major problem. The surrounding mountains trap the pollutants in the valley, and it isn’t until a good rain or snow fall that the air clears up – for a while. Then the pollution come back. It’s like that in our lives. We have an experience that changes us, and we clear out the pollution. Then it seems to creep back in, almost without our notice, until we can’t breathe again.
Lasting change takes hard work and new habits. Lasting change takes repentance and a change of heart. Henry B Eyring expressed: “What we seek … is this kind of change Enos experienced. … True conversion depends on seeking freely in faith, with great effort and some pain. Then it is the Lord who can grant, in His time, the miracle of cleansing and change. Each person starts from a different place, with a different set of experiences, and so a different need for cleansing and for change. The Lord knows that place, and so only He can set the course.”
As President Russell M Nelson taught: “When Jesus asks you and me to ‘repent,’ He is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit— even the way we breathe”. Let’s all start where we are and work to eliminate the pollutants in our lives so we can breathe freely and be like the people at the beginning of 4th Nephi – the happiest people in all of God’s creation.
