In the Bhagwad Gita, Krishna goes after an idea most of us secretly believe. The idea is that if you simply refrain from acting, you can stay innocent. His answer to Arjuna in 3.4 is that this is not how the world works. You cannot reach freedom from karma by skipping the work of action. You cannot become pure by stepping aside.
The example I keep returning to is from the same epic, almost the same week. Krishna's elder brother Balrama could not bring himself to take a side in the war. He had taught the mace to Duryodhana. He loved his brother Krishna. He decided that picking either side would cost him something he was not willing to lose. So he chose what looked like the noblest exit available. He left for the Saraswati on a pilgrimage and stayed away for all eighteen days of the war.
From a distance, it looks immaculate. He did not raise a weapon against his brother or his student. He spent the war chanting at holy ghats. By the standards we usually apply to ourselves, he did everything right.
This is exactly what Bhagwad Gita 3.4 is warning against. Krishna is on the battlefield delivering the very verse that takes apart his brother's choice. You cannot escape the karma of a war by doing tirthayatra during it. Balrama's absence was itself a presence. His side, whichever side that was, had to fight without him.
I notice this temptation in myself often. There are decisions I avoid by telling myself I am staying out of office politics, and conversations I do not start because I tell myself it is not my place. The Gita does not let any of us hide inside our own piety. Krishna would probably say that even the holiest thing can be a way of running away from what you should do.