Thomas Merton and the Crisis of Faith

Having spent his spiritual life in search of a mystic union with God, Thomas Merton's teachings of contemplative thought and meditation remain relevant more than forty years after his death. Among the many subjects this prolific author tackled during his lifetime, Merton dedicated a special focus to the crisis of faith which he felt had befallen the generation in which he was living. Having written candidly about the period of his life in which he experienced a distance from God in his autobiography "The Seven Storey Mountain," Thomas Merton believed he knew quite well what caused this sort of crisis. It was, in fact, Merton's own crisis of faith which compelled him to journey outside the Christian tradition in order to rediscover the mystic union with God he thought had been lost to him.

Thomas Merton understood that in order to treat a malady, one must attack the root cause. In an effort to identify this cause, Merton looked towards the human condition. It was here that he saw the sickness that was the loss of mystic union with God manifest itself in a variety of different ways. Merton concluded that it was due to the various obstacles facing the modern person that the contemplative of his day was, increasingly, losing the capacity for union with God. One of the major culprits which distracted the believer from God according to Thomas Merton was the age of materialism, which Merton felt resulted in a loss of oneness with the world, rendering a mystic union with God all but impossible. To remedy this, Merton suggested that no matter what individual faith a person might hold, they would do well not to close their minds to the teachings of the great spiritual and contemplative thinkers, whether they be Buddhist, Christian, or anywhere in between.

According to Thomas Merton, solving this crisis of faith would be more difficult than simply immersing oneself in religious study. Merton believed that in failing to achieve a union with God, humankind was its own worst enemy. In order to cease being at odds with oneself, Thomas Merton believed a person must reject the temptations of the technological and materialistic age. As a spiritual teacher, Merton understood that it was his responsibility to keep the contemplative tradition alive and guide those who had lost their spirituality back to a relationship with God. In attempting to accomplish this, Merton pointed out that it was the distractions of the modern age which prevented believers from achieving the desired mystic relationship with God. When human beings could quiet the external world around them, they would acquire the capacity for contemplative thought necessary to understand that God is not a being, but an infinite presence alive within each individual.

Through his eloquence and experience, Thomas Merton was able to speak to the ills and troubles of those experiencing spiritual crisis with a passion and clarity seldom seen in spiritual teachers. One of the ways in which Merton believed people lost their ability to form a mystic union with God was in being something other than what they were. It was Merton's contention that inside each individual there existed two wholly separate selves, one of which a person wanted to be but could not, for that self was hidden from God. Finding and destroying this other false self was at the core of restoring the relationship between the believer and God. In order to do this, Merton stressed the importance of contemplative thought, which he felt may once again prepare those who were willing for communication with God.

In order to rediscover the true self, Thomas Merton insisted that the believer must resist the urge to sink into temptation, however strong it may be. To Merton, the force that compels us to move away from a mystic union with God could only be counteracted with contemplative prayer, which works to immerse the participant in the love that is a relationship with God. In this way, believers may put an end to the obstacles which are hindering them from knowing God by embracing the quiet and stillness that is conducive to allowing God to enter into their lives.