What Hope for a Complete Solution?
JOYCE and her husband reared three children four miles (6 km) from a metal smelting company. One child has a learning disability. Another has had rheumatic fever. Joyce has asthma and on many days cannot go outside because of fumes from the plant.
“Did we make a mistake, staying here?” she asked. Her husband, Lou, added, “We’ve got a farm in north-central Idaho. . . . There are [chemical pesticide] spray planes going around that place all the time. So where else is there? Los Angeles? Love Canal? Three Mile Island? You sort of wonder: where do you go?”
Yes, where do you go to escape the effects of pollution? To do so, in the words of the apostle Paul in connection with moral pollution, “you would actually have to get out of the world.” (1 Corinthians 5:10) So though we can do some things to ease the problem, pollution may have to be endured as are other stresses of life.
Need Inner Strength
“The outward man does indeed suffer wear and tear, but every day the inward man receives fresh strength,” wrote the apostle Paul. (2 Corinthians 4:16, Phillips) The “wear and tear” on our bodies cannot be avoided—even without pollution we are all growing older and dying. Yet Paul renewed with “fresh strength” the inner driving force that involved his mind and heart by daily cultivating a close friendship with God. By focusing his attention on God’s promises for the future, he could cope.
Though Millie’s pressures were different, they were just as intense to her. (See page 3.) She said: “I had such pain and confusion that at times it was a minute-by-minute struggle to endure.” What helped her cope?
“I never failed to read my Bible and Bible study aids,” explained Millie. “I had to put these in my protective glass-covered reading box because of the ink fumes, and sometimes I could hardly concentrate. But I would plead: ‘Please, Jehovah, just show me something out of your Word that will help me get through this day and not give up.’ He always answered my prayers and he brought me through all of this.” You, too, can develop similar inner strength by a study and application of the Bible along with the loving help of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Another source of strength was the encouraging support of her family and others in the local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They recorded Bible lectures for her when she could not attend and some made clothing for her of material she was not sensitive to. When her pollution-free “metal home” had to be moved to another area, many from several congregations helped.
‘But living by the Bible isn’t going to change this world! It’s not going to cause others to stop pollution,’ is the way many feel. Stopping man-made pollution completely now is unbelievably complex. For instance, it has been said that “Britain’s smokiest, grimiest” factory was allowed by the government to continue polluting because, reportedly, it provides work for nearly 4,000 persons, so closing it would hurt local employment.
Today’s economic system characterized by greed and the need for profits, along with consumers who will often buy the cheapest product and only a perfect-looking fruit or vegetable, makes it difficult to implement nonpolluting alternatives. After reviewing the way dangerous pesticides were allowed by the government to saturate the environment, Lewis Regenstein, in his book America the Poisoned, blamed “a combination of industry pressure and governmental inaction.” He highlighted ‘the hopeless ineffectiveness of the present system.’ Really, the entire system needs replacing.
God’s Kingdom—A Righteous Government
God promises to remove this entire greedy present system in favor of a righteous government under the King, Jesus Christ, who will show a genuine concern for all his subjects. “Their blood will be precious in his [Jesus’] eyes. There will come to be plenty of grain on the earth; on the top of the mountains there will be an overflow.” (Psalm 72:14, 16) Yes, with complete knowledge of everything involved in ecology, God’s government by Christ will provide an abundance for all without poisoning earth’s inhabitants!
‘But,’ you may wonder, ‘what about those places already saturated with toxic chemicals?’ In the past God showed his ability to purify water and remove poisons from contaminated food. (See 2 Kings 2:19-22; 4:38-41.) In the future he will use such powers, along with earth’s own recuperative processes, to create an unpolluted Paradise of beauty.—Luke 23:43.
Since there is overwhelming evidence that man is now “ruining” our earth in a way unknown to any other period in history, the time for God’s Kingdom to “bring to ruin those ruining the earth” is near at hand!—Revelation 11:18.
[Picture on page 12]
Soon God will remove those ruining the earth and make it a Paradise