Washing Ones Dirty Sins in the Publicly Dirtier Holy Rivers

Karl Marx said, "Religion is the Opium of the People".

If one were to ponder wide and deep into the meaning of this statement against the most atrocious, illogical and even lunatical deeds done in the name of religion, it is not difficult to see why religion is indeed a drug that sedates, hallucinates and causes mankind to stray into unreality and trapped in addiction.

Human sacrifice, superstition, suicide bombing to attain a piece of paradise in the sky, spending one's lifetime savings on a single pilgrimage, penance, bathing is dirty holy rivers to rid one's multi past life sins, feng shui, bazi etc are the outrageous things people will do in the name of religion.

Take for example the forgiveness of past life(s) and present life sins by dipping in polluted so called holy rivers, to what logic is this?

Millions went ga-ga to dip into the Ganges and Ramuna in the belief that there past and present sins will somehow be "washed" away by the holy waters because at his special auspicious moments when the cosmos align once in half a decade or so, the "nectar" of the gods poured into the waters of these rivers will perform these sin erasing miracles.

Hey, wait a minute, what about the many other millions Hindus in India and elsewhere who are laden with sins but have not the means to travel to this place? Will they die only to be recycled back to an even lower caste through the "law" of karma tic reincarnation?

A God or gods who stipulate that only by going to a certain place to perform a certain ritual before his or her sins are forgiven, to me, deserve not the reverence nor respect of man.

The Jews worship in Jerusalem, yet the Samaritans worship in the mountains, but Jesus Christ said more than two thousand years ago that it will come a time, when time and place is of no relevance when the worship of God is concerned. For, it will come a time when we shall worship God in spirit and in truth, because God after all is Spirit.

If God is Spirit, He is not confined to time and space and further, the Kingdom of God is within man and no where else.

If we cannot revere God in our daily living in our home town, but found it necessary to burn away good money in making a long journey to some place to wash away our sins, this seems ostensibly silly to me.

If we could just be more conscious and committed to walk our talk in our daily life, religion would no longer be addictive opiate but medicine to heal a world burdened with sin and death.

Let's take this first step of faith in this long journey of life of walking our talking, for indeed there ought to be less talk and more walk for walking is visible even from afar, whereas talking is audible only within a small radius.