I continually have to monitor my spiritual life. How much of it is form without substance?
We stood by the casket and looked at what remained-the seemingly premature death of a good and notable theologian.
After weeks and hours attending his brother-in-law, helping him die, Tom’s emotional wounds were obvious. “This is terribly wrong,” he groaned. He strained for words to express his grief. “It’s … it’s form without substance.”
Those words, form without substance, worked their way into my mind. That is what makes death so awesome. This man should be substance, but we saw only form. The implications seemed outrageous. Form without substance is the essence of sin and its terror.
In the days that followed I was haunted by that phrase-form without substance. I thought of it as we counseled a couple, married some ten years, who had never connected in ways that bring genuine intimacy. The husband’s hierarchical definition of marriage demanded that his wife meet his needs. In the beginning she had agreed, but as she matured she became more her own person and a threat to him. He raged against her spirituality; she dug her heels in to protect her identity. The more they talked the more we realized they had the form of marriage but no substance.
The fraternity man who played the role of Lothario, boasting of his conquests, came for help far too late. He had left a trail of brokenness. His own sense of self was fractured. He spoke of “making love,” when he knew nothing of love. His involvement with pornography, first found in his father’s closet, had led him to see women as two-dimensional fantasies. Addicted to “form without substance,” the act without the relationship, the outline without the interior reality-could he understand the awfulness of such sin?
At dinner in a posh restaurant one evening, a young man who used to live with us, now a successful doctor, filled the conversation with namedropping. “Do you know so-and-so? He’s a friend of mine.”
His repetitions became almost a liturgy, so intent was he on convincing us of his wide influence and many friends. His climb for prominence, his ego needs, his fast-paced lifestyle: he had no real friends. When everyone is a friend, no one is. With his dollars he kept up the charade. He had people around him, but no one really knew him.
My sadness grew as I listened. More form without substance. And the emptiness of it spoke of sin.
Is this why Jesus cursed the fig tree? Is this why he spoke so bluntly to the Pharisees, calling them “whited sepulchres.” I looked again at Jesus’ warnings, his rebukes. That is what he hates-form without substance. Pretense. Words without meaning. Doing without being.
I still wince remembering the first time I had to admit my own such sinfulness. I had gone with a team of university students to lead a church’s evening service. On the way, the team leader asked me if I would give a brief testimony of what God was doing in my life. I drew a blank. I couldn’t think of anything anyone would want to hear. But I did remember something I had read that had impressed me. So I took the experience that belonged to someone else and made it my own, and came off looking good. The form of walking with God brought me praise; the awful lack of substance haunted me. I remember asking God that night how he could put up with me.
I had to talk with him the other night about another way I faked my way through a situation. My intuition picked up quickly that one of our dinner guests, a woman I was meeting for the first time, desperately needed someone who cared about what she was experiencing. I sensed her giftedness and emotional needs had been trampled in the rush of her husband’s ministry. I offered her impeccable hospitality in matters of food, comfort, and graciousness, but I stopped short of touching her real need. I was praised for my hospitality, the form was there. But the substance of what I believe God expected me to offer was missing.
It’s a sneaky business. I continually have to monitor my spiritual life. Ho much of it is form without substance My prayers. Singing the hymns. My skill in teaching the Bible.
I can say all the right words, even impressive words. But I need reminders about what impresses God. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” I do well to speak less and listen to his Word more.
“Your heavenly Father knows,” Jesus reminds us, telling us that what we are in private is more important to God than our public performance. His press reviews are the only ones that count.
Form without substance. These words persist in warning me. I determine anew not to let my leaf structure outgrow my root system. Not to preach to others more than I have put to work in my own life. Instead, to be more concerned with what God thinks about me than what people do.
That’s integrity: the biblical vision of wholeness, the single eye.
This matter is so important to God that he will raise our bodies from the disintegration of death to make us whole again, to unite form and substance. He purposes to do that in our minds and spirits now to get us ready for heaven.
Gladys Hunt works with university students through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
