Finding Our Way: Thomas Merton, Resistance, and Living Our Faith Today

Understanding Merton and Cardin as bookends for our search for meaning and living the gospel

Finding Our Way: Thomas Merton, Resistance, and Living Our Faith Today

The Time Of Our Lives~Together as humans and disciples

I want to start with something we all feel: life right now is exhausting. We’re pulled in a thousand directions. Our newsfeeds are screaming at us. Everyone seems angry, and it feels like we’re supposed to pick a side on everything—right now, loudly, or we’re part of the problem.

But here’s what I’ve been wondering: What if Christian resistance looks totally different from what our culture tells us it should? What if it’s not about being the loudest voice in the room or winning arguments on social media?

I am introducing, if you don’t already know, who Thomas Merton is: a Trappist monk who spent his life asking these exact questions. And I want to show you how his insights, combined with a practical method developed by a Belgian priest named Joseph Cardinal Cardijn, can help us navigate our crazy world with more peace, clarity, and authentic faith.

Who Was Thomas Merton?

Let me tell you about Merton first. He wasn’t born into this life of quiet wisdom—far from it. Young Thomas Merton was brilliant but also a bit of a mess. He partied hard at Columbia University, fathered a child out of wedlock, and was searching desperately for meaning. Then something happened. He found his way to the Catholic Church and eventually to a Trappist monastery in Kentucky.

You’d think that would be the end of the story—monk goes to monastery, prays all day, disconnects from the world. But Merton couldn’t do that. Even from behind monastery walls, he watched what was happening in America and around the world: the nuclear arms race, the Vietnam War, racism and Jim Crow laws, the violence of poverty. And he couldn’t stay silent.

What makes Merton so fascinating is that he insisted we can’t separate prayer from protest, contemplation from resistance. For him, the deeper you go into worship, the more you have to speak out against injustice—not less.

What Did Merton Mean by “Resistance”?

Now, when Merton talks about resistance, he’s not talking about what we usually picture. He’s not organizing boycotts or leading marches (Hint: He supported those who did). He’s talking about something more fundamental: refusing to go along with the lies our culture tells us about power, violence, and what it means to be human.

Merton looked at American society—even American Christianity—and saw a dangerous marriage between faith and nationalism, between the cross and the sword. He saw Christians blessing wars, defending racism, and worshiping at the altar of “our way of life” instead of at the foot of the cross.

His resistance was radical but straightforward: he said Christians must be nonviolent. Not passive—there’s a huge difference—but nonviolent. We stand against evil, yes, but we refuse to use evil’s methods. We don’t bomb people into peace. We don’t hate people into love. We don’t lie, manipulate, or dominate to achieve God’s kingdom.

This is what he learned from Gandhi, from Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, and ultimately from Jesus himself. Remember what Jesus said? “Blessed are the meek.” Not blessed are the powerful, the loudest, the most aggressive. The meek.

Enter Joseph Cardijn and See-Judge-Act

Now, this is beautiful theology, but how do we actually do this? This is where Joseph Cardijn comes in.

Cardijn was a Belgian priest working with young factory workers in the early 1900s. These were kids—teenagers, really—working brutal hours in dangerous conditions, being exploited and forgotten. Cardijn looked at them and saw not victims but potential leaders. He believed ordinary laypeople could transform society if they learned to look at the world through Gospel eyes.

So he developed a method, a way of approaching any situation. It’s elegantly simple: See-Judge-Act.

Let me break it down:

SEE means really looking at what’s happening around you. Not scrolling past it, not numbing yourself to it, but paying attention to the concrete reality of people’s lives. What are the actual facts? Who’s hurting? What systems are in place?

JUDGE means bringing your faith to bear on what you’ve seen. What does the Gospel say about this? How would Jesus know this situation? What does our Catholic social teaching tell us? This isn’t about judging people—it’s about judging situations, systems, sins.

ACT means doing something. Not just anything, but something rooted in what you’ve seen and judged. Something that actually addresses the problem in a way that’s consistent with Gospel values.

Cardijn used this method to train thousands of young workers who went on to change labor laws, fight for workplace dignity, and transform their communities. It worked because it was practical, repeatable, and deeply Christian.

How Merton Used This Framework

Now here’s where it gets interesting: even though Merton and Cardijn came from different worlds—one a contemplative monk, the other a grassroots organizer—their approaches fit together beautifully.

Let me give you an example from Merton’s writing about racism in America.

SEE: Merton didn’t look away from the brutal reality of racism in the 1960s. He wrote about the “awful silence” of white Christians who knew about Jim Crow laws, lynching, segregation—and said nothing. He saw the concrete harm: Black Americans denied basic dignity, beaten for trying to vote, killed for being in the wrong place.

JUDGE: Then he brought the Gospel to bear. He wrote that racism wasn’t just a political issue or a social problem—it was a sin against the image of God in every person. He challenged white liberals (including himself in my college days) who claimed to support civil rights but did nothing to actually risk anything or change anything. He said our comfortable Christianity had become an idol, a false god.

ACT: Merton’s action looked different because he was a monk. He couldn’t march (though he wanted to, I am sure). But he wrote. He prayed. He corresponded with Martin Luther King Jr. and encouraged nonviolent activists. He spoke truth to the Church, challenging Catholics to live up to their baptismal commitment to see every person as Christ.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Let me give you a more contemporary example to make this concrete.

Think about how we talk about immigrants right now. There’s so much noise, so much fear-mongering, so many political agendas. How would we approach this using See-Judge-Act in a Merton-inspired way?

SEE: We’d start by learning the actual facts. Not the Twitter hot-takes, but real stories. Who are these people? Why are they coming? What’s happening to them? We could volunteer at a refugee center or actually talk to immigrant families. We’d look at the concrete human reality, not the abstract political debate.

JUDGE: Then we’d ask: What does our faith say about this? We’d remember that the Holy Family was refugees in Egypt. We’d recall “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” We’d look at Catholic social teaching about the universal destination of goods and the right to migrate. We’d distinguish between legitimate questions about borders and policies (which are debatable) and the non-negotiable dignity of every human person (which isn’t).

ACT: Only then would we act. That could mean supporting organizations that help immigrants. Maybe it means speaking up when someone dehumanizes “illegals” at a family dinner. Perhaps it means examining our own hearts for hidden prejudices. It may mean advocating for humane policies. But whatever we do flows from what we’ve seen and what our faith teaches—not from political tribalism or fear.

The Heart of It: Contemplation and Resistance

Here’s what Merton understood that we desperately need today: real resistance starts on the inside.

Merton talked a lot about the “true self” and the “false self.” The false self is the one society creates—the consumer, the ideologue, the person desperate for approval, likes, and being on the right side. The false self is violent, fearful, and constantly defensive.

The true self is who God created you to be—free, loving, connected to all humanity. The true self can resist evil without becoming evil. It can stand for truth without being arrogant. It can love enemies because it doesn’t see anyone as ultimately “other.”

Contemplation—prayer, silence, sitting with Scripture—is how we discover our true self. And once we do, resistance becomes natural. We can’t speak out against injustice because we see it as an offense against the God we’ve encountered in prayer.

This is why Merton said nonviolence isn’t just a tactic—it’s a way of life that flows from knowing who you really are.

Where Cardijn and Merton Differ (And Why It Matters)

Now, Cardijn and Merton approached resistance differently, and that’s actually helpful for us.

Cardijn was all about organized action. He created groups, trained leaders, and built movements. His resistance was visible, structured, and strategic. He believed laypeople needed to be equipped and mobilized to transform society from within.

Merton was more prophetic and, honestly, more radical. He didn’t trust structures and organizations that much—he’d seen too many of them become corrupt. He was suspicious of any attempt to baptize political power or use Christianity to justify the status quo. His resistance was about refusing to sanctify violence, calling the Church back to its roots, insisting on total nonviolence even when it seemed impractical.

Both are necessary. We need Cardijn’s practical organizing and Merton’s prophetic purity. We need groups doing the work and voices calling us to go deeper, not to compromise, and to remember who we really are.

Making This Real: What Can We Do?

What does this mean for us, practically, right now?

First, start small. Pick one issue you care about—maybe it’s something local, something you encounter in your actual life. Use See-Judge-Act. Really see it. Study it. Then bring your faith to it. What does Jesus say? Finally, do something, even if it’s small.

Second, build contemplation into your life. You can’t do this alone on willpower. You need prayer. Even ten minutes a day of silence, of sitting with Scripture, of asking God to show you your true self—it changes everything.

Third, find your people! Merton corresponded with activists and other monks. Dorothy Day built community. You need others who share this commitment. That could be a book club (I’ll give you some suggestions in a minute). It could be a few friends who want to pray and act together.

Fourth, practice nonviolence in small ways. Don’t just save it for the significant issues. Practice it in your marriage, with your kids, at work, in traffic. Train yourself to respond to conflict without manipulation, domination, or revenge. It’s a discipline.

Fifth, stay humble. Merton was constantly reminding himself and others: we don’t have all the answers. We’re not the saviors. We act, yes, but we trust that God is doing the real work. This keeps us from the arrogance and burnout that plague so many activists.

Books to Explore Together

If you want to go deeper, let me suggest a reading path:

Start with New Seeds of Contemplation. It’s not about politics on the surface, but it lays the foundation—the true self, the false self, what absolute freedom looks like.

Then move to Faith and Violence and Seeds of Destruction. These apply Merton’s contemplative insights to real issues: war, racism, and nuclear weapons. You’ll see See-Judge-Act in action, even if Merton doesn’t use those words.

For something more focused, read his essay “Blessed Are the Meek: The Roots of Christian Nonviolence.” It’s short but powerful—his most straightforward explanation of why Christians must be nonviolent.

Any of these would work great for a book club. Read a chapter, then practice See-Judge-Act with something happening in your own community.

Closing Thoughts

Let me land this plane.

We live in loud, angry, polarized times. It’s easy to feel like we have to choose between keeping our heads down and staying safe, or jumping into the culture wars and fighting fire with fire.

Thomas Merton and Joseph Cardijn offer us a third way—a better way. Stand for truth, yes. Resist evil, absolutely. But do it as Jesus did: meekly, nonviolently, rooted in prayer, seeing every person (even your enemy) as someone Christ died for.

This isn’t a weakness. It’s the hardest thing in the world. It requires more courage to love your enemy than to hate them. It takes more strength to refuse violence than to use it.

But Merton believed—, and I think—that this is what Christians are called to. Not to baptize political parties or culture wars, but to witness to a totally different way of being human. A way that looks like Jesus.

And the beautiful thing? When we live this way, we actually change things, not on the world’s timeline, not in ways that make headlines. But we participate in God’s work of transforming the world from the inside out.

So let’s resist. Let’s see clearly, judge faithfully, and act courageously. But let’s do it Merton’s way—with meekness, with prayer, with love that won’t quit even when it costs us everything.

Innovation-education-collaboration is where we start. Are you ready?