In other words there is a great danger in facile and thoughtless verbalizations of spiritual reality. All true spiritual disciplines recognize the peril of idolatry in the irresponsible fabrication of pseudo-spiritual concepts which serve only to delude man and to subject him once again to a deeper captivity just when he seems on the point of tasting the true bliss and the perfect poverty of liberation. (p. 114)Twenty years before Jean Baudrillard wrote his philosophical treatise Simulacra and Simulation, and nearly forty years before the Wachowski brothers crafted the ideas into The Matrix, Merton, in his genius, was already there. Merton asserts that we tend to create a pseudo-reality built on the symbols, absolutes and pseudo-events of our day (152). Man is in danger of living in this crust of unreality where there is only black and white and those who do not share the same cracked worldview are vilified and tensions lead to violence and war.
I was fortunate enough to read Merton's thoughts on Simone Weil while at St. Gregory's Abby. I had access to their extensive library which has a theological and philosophical leaning. I was able to consult Weil's writings and read the article that was the subject of Merton's reflection. She writes of the way we create concepts with capital-letters that loose their meaning, being hollow husks that serve to divide good society from evil. In her day it was words like Capitalism, Communism, Security, in our day we could add Terrorism and Socialism to the list. She asserts that all of these words are incorrectly invoked as reasons to war. The only real reason for war left with any meaning is the state's capacity to wage war (83).
In the light of this dangerous tendency to false realities, which lead to violence, Merton offers the curative of contemplation. It is only as we face the true Reality, are immersed in the true Reality, that we can face injustice and violence down with Christian non-violence. We Christians must avoid the danger of the quote above of letting our Christianity become another layer of unreality - law unto itself.
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