The Plausibility Structure of Love

When is the last time we had a reality check?

When is the last time you considered carefully what you define as reality? This may seem like a strange question, but it’s really quite an essential one to ask ourselves.

And often.

Most of us stumble through our day-to-day lives never questioning our own views of reality. Our brains work hard to establish a firm foundation of belief from which we can manage our mundane existence, and often the only time we question that foundation is when circumstances force us to do so.

Sociologist Peter Berger coined the term ‘plausibility structure’ to describe the conversation between our social worlds and the meaning we make of life. In other words, he described the interplay between our social groups and the realities we build together and agree upon. Theologians and sociologists have taken his theory of plausibility structure and run wild. Books, articles, dissertations, and models abound in which people have tried to conceptualize how we humans gather up in groups and create worlds, and especially how we ‘code switch’ between realities often effortlessly (such as secular and sacred realities).

Sociologists and theologians have also noted that, when it comes to plausibility structures and religion, ‘lived religion’ is more than just a construct we create with our language, and that it includes our emotions and embodied experiences as well. Our faith, then, is housed in a context of interaction between people, our bodies, our stories, our emotions, and our experiences.

Code Switching Compromises Integrity

I’ve been reflecting on what this means for us as people of faith, here-and-now, in this current cultural moment in which we find ourselves living. We’re creating plausibility structures together, in our groups, under the name of Jesus, and often finding the plausibility structures we’ve created are in direct conflict with other people of Christian faith. And I suspect that this is caused less by the fact that we can’t agree upon the basics of the faith, and more to do with the code switching to which we’ve become so adept.

The cognitive dissonance of constant code switching cannot be sustained for long. Eventually, it destroys our integrity.

Jesus has been crystal clear: His followers will operate under a plausibility structure of love.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:34-35

Jesus acknowledged that, yes, this would be a new plausibility structure, a new way of constructing reality together. It would be different than what other religions taught, much different than the ways of ‘the world,’ and even uncomfortably different for those genuinely seeking to follow him.

Nevertheless, the law of love (Matt 22: 34-40) is meant to be our new lived reality, the water in which we swim, the air that we breathe. And because love constitutes ultimate reality – and, make no mistake, this is the truth claim of Christianity – there can be no code switching.

We can’t intentionally live under the reality of love one day, and the reality of hate and disdain the next day. We can’t purposely code switch between humility and pride, peace and violence, forgiveness and retribution, hope and despair, honor and scorn, hospitality and rejection.

Certainly, we will struggle to hold the tension between our fallible human nature and our obedience to Christ’s new command. For sure, we will have moments of choosing to go back to a reality in which disdain, pride, violence, retribution, despair, scorn and rejection make sense. Because, let’s be honest, a plausibility structure of love makes no sense to a self-serving, survival-of-the-fittest, fear-driven world. And Jesus was painfully aware of this. After all, he lived under the plausibility structure of love all the way to the cross where He demonstrated – with his heart, soul, mind, and bodily strength – once, and for all, that God Almighty’s reality is one of love.

^“And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ And they cast lots to divide his garments.”

Luke 23:34

Interrogating Ourselves

I’ll ask this question again – to you and to myself – when is the last time we interrogated our plausibility structure, the reality we’re building together with our language, our bodies, and our experiences? Are we living in the reality of love Christ has commanded? Or are we code switching back and forth because it’s expedient, more comfortable, and perhaps even wiser to do so?

I’m sure you’ve heard, as have I, Christians rebuking those of us who emphasize love too much, especially when we are talking about it much more than we’re talking about the current sin-du jour, or God’s wrath and justice against the ‘wicked.’ Our gospel of love is lopsided, they say, and we are leading others astray.

I must ask, where did Jesus include this qualifier or this counterbalance to love? Also, how could living in the reality of God’s love cause someone to stray? It seems to me that the longer one is loved by God, and the deeper one learns to enter into that flow of Divine love, the closer one will be growing toward God – not away. Of course, a context of love necessitates freedom and freedom requires a relinquishing of control over others.

Wrath is a much better controlling mechanism than love, that’s for sure.

But fear of God’s wrath often keeps us from experiencing God’s love. It’s hard to trust a God who wants to always smite you for your sin.

And perhaps this is why Jesus gave us this new law, this uncomfortable plausibility structure, in which to live. Perhaps by making love our lived reality – with all our hearts, souls, minds, and bodily strength – we can, together, create a context in which true and lasting spiritual transformation can take place. And when truly transformed-by-love people gather up in their groups as humans like to do, and then move out into the wider world…well, the possibilities give me chills.

Love sounds too easy, too loosey-goosey, and even too weak to change the world, right? Yet, the God of All Creation says that it’s the preeminent law, the one true base upon which we can build our lives.

Maybe, just maybe, what we really need to repent of is our lack of trust in Christ’s words, commands, and lived example. If the greatest command is love, perhaps we need to confess and mourn our disobedience to this command, our insistence on code switching between Christ’s way and the plausibility structures created by fearful, myopic humans. We would do well to concern ourselves with how our hearts, souls, minds, and bodily strength are being of service to God’s ultimate command of love.

The invitation is a beautiful, albeit uncomfortable one. You and I, and all of creation, are being invited out of false plausibility structures and into the only one that’s real, that will stand for all eternity, that reflects and refracts God’s wisdom and beauty, the Divine Dance of love.

“And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.” – Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction