Dissimulation
“Let Love Be Without Dissimulation”
Romans 12:9
Can you remember the last time in casual conversation you heard someone use the word “dissimulation”? Imagine someone making comments like “You appear well, but it is a dissimulation.” or He gives every aspect of being wealthy but it is a dissimulation.”
In the King James Bible (KJV), Paul uses the word to describe love. He uses the word in Romans 12:9 in the midst of a set of instructions about how Christians should relate to each other and says “Let love be without dissimulation.”
The word means ‘to hide under a false appearance.” In other words, the apostle Paul says that we are to love each other and our love should be genuine, real, authentic without being “phony.” Another term that would give meaning as dissimulation would be hypocrite.
February is the month of love—a time to think about sweethearts, candy, roses, and valentine hearts. Couples get engaged or married during February.
For February, 2012, let us think about how the word love is practiced in the church. As Church of the Brethren, we practice a service called the Love Feast (which includes feetwashing, a love meal together, and the Bread and Cup Communion). In past years in our denomination, you could have observed church members exchanging the “kiss of charity.” Both of these practices are demonstrations of our love for each other.
In the day in which we live, persons learn to put on a veneer, to mask out, to hide real feelings from each other: even in the church setting.
Included in one of our favorite Brethren hymns in a song titled, “Brethren, We Have met to Worship”, are these words, Let us love our God supremely, Let us love each other too.
And God’s word gives further instruction to let our love be real.
May February 2012 from February 1, 2012 to February 29, 2012 (yes, this is Leap Year) be a month from beginning to end of “love without dissimulation” to all those who are part of our lives and especially to those with whom we worship.
In Christian Love,
Pastor Harold E. Yeager