All that gold...

This is the Buddhist temple Wat Phrathat. It sits 3500 feet above the city of Chiang Mai on the Mt Doi Suthep. It was built some time in the 1300s and all that gold you see here...yep its real...over 100 tons of the stuff. What a waste.



View from the top of Doi Suthep.

¹⁸ With whom, then, will you compare God?

To what image will you liken him?

¹⁹ As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,

and a goldsmith overlays it with gold

and fashions silver chains for it.

²⁰ A person too poor to present such an offering

selects wood that will not rot;

they look for a skilled worker

to set up an idol that will not topple. (Isaiah 40)

I kept thinking about what a selfish religion Buddhism is. Many of these people are so poor, particularly in Cambodia, yet throughout these countries are these massive pagodas plastered with solid gold. The Buddhist monks go out every morning taking food from people who barely have enough to survive. Yet they are placated with the promise that if they give what little they have, they will earn brownie points for the afterlife. I'm thinking that if the monks spent more time growing food and less time meditating in front in front of a statue of a dead man there wouldn't be much of a hunger problem in the region. But I'm just being insensitive. Or is it sensitive...I'm not sure.