President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina
(Colossians 1:13-20, 27-29; 2:4, 8; 3:1-3, 12, 13)
India assaults all of the senses at once. It is overwhelming. And nowhere does India overwhelm you more than in Rishikesh. It is really a beautiful setting. A lush mountainous area where the Ganges River makes its appearance from the Himalayan Mountains, Rishikesh could be a family resort. But it is not. I would describe it more like a scene from hell.
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The fog that rises off of the river mixes with animal dung, hundreds of outdoor fires, and strange incense being burned to colorful idols made by human hands and that are on every corner. Gurus line the river in palaces, where the British Raj would have once holidayed. The spiritual advisors are also along the river banks in huts, where, for a price, they will tell you how to give up your mind through idolatry and drugs—and through supporting them—and become free. This is what the Beatles did, what many other celebrities did, and they brought back their experience of Rishikesh to the West. Thus the drug-infested 1960s were born. I told my wife that I felt like I was seeing the sights and sounds of Woodstock, Haight Ashbury, the Monterey Pop Festival and several Friday night parties I attended as an unbeliever in the early 1970s. All of that was an imitation of the real thing, but this Rishikesh was the real thing.
As we strolled past the countless cows roaming like protected divas through the village—dodging ox carts, beggars and idol trinket salesmen—we were led by Dr. David Fiol, who has ministered there since 1964. As he explained the idols and drew our attention to this mountain "holy place" as it is called, I have never felt more demonic oppression in all of my life. The whole pantheon of Indian gods was being worshiped actively, and a sort of ancient Ashara pole was set up for fertility worship. It was like being dropped into ancient Canaan.
As our missionary there told us: "The whole system of castes, which keeps human beings down—idol worship, drugs, cows believed to be of greater worth than human beings, poverty, polygamy and the worst filth you can imagine—is built on a myth."
I left that place thinking one thing:
Ideas have consequences. Ideas affect all of life. Our nation was built on an idea that there is a God who made us; that human life, made in the image of God, has dignity. But the further our nation gets from the absolute truth of God, the more we will look like Rishikesh.
Rishikesh, India, stands as a sad example of what happens when human beings reject the truth of the One true God and begin to worship idols. It is a worldview that is false.