Household: Plausibility Structures

Peter Berger was one of my favorite sociologists from college and grad school days. I believe it was Berger who first coined the phrase "plausibility structure." What is a plausibility structure, and what does it have to do with the Household of God?

Sociologists have long discussed the importance of the "looking glass self." As we go through life, we look at others for clues about how we are being received. Each person becomes a mirror that reflects an image. Those we are closest in community with tend to become our primary reference points for assessing ourselves. We look to them for affirmation or rejection of our values, behaviors, experiences, and perceptions. We have shared narratives that interpret events around us. Our interaction with these "mirrors" sustains our ability to perceive the world the way we do. We reflect feedback to others as well. This collection of mutually shared perspectives and narratives are plausibility structures because they keep our perspective on the world plausible.

The Household of God and the notion of fictive family were metaphors used by Jesus and the apostles to form alternative plausibility structures for the people of God. These images redefined identities and the nature of interaction with others. The metaphors created a sense of unity, solidarity, and belonging. They focused on the group's mission and gave their work eschatological meaning. It also generated a support network as each pursued their own walk with God. As people were in community with each other, the reality of the coming Kingdom took on a tangible quality.

It seems to me that we have lost our plausibility structures. We offer no compelling narrative to reshape individual narratives in our present context. Our identities are mainly left untouched; we do not experience unity, we are clueless about the mission of God in the world, and we wonder if anything we do has eternal significance. Through it all, we frequently feel alone and without adequate support.

In this closing post, I will not offer a simple solution to the need to recover plausibility structures. We see how crucial Jesus, Paul, and New Testament writers thought they were. The entire mission of the church is rooted in the idea of people living in plausibility structures as they give witness to the coming reign of Christ. We have seen how false images of "church as cocooning family" or "church as a corporation" are destructive plausibility structures. We have seen how ecclesiastical structures have created a destructive narrative that casts followers of Jesus as clients of a class of super Christians called clergy rather than seeing each person as a minister called and sent by God into their corner of creation.

The challenge is discovering what it means to be the Household of God in our present context. We need plausibility structures empowered by the Holy Spirit as missional agents of transformation. Going back and seeing how Jesus and the early church used fictive family and the Household of God is a good place to start.

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Comments

[kerryn]

thanks for all your work on this series Michael.

warm regards
Kerryn

[Michael W. Kruse]

Thanks Kerryn. I did far more with this than I intended but it was very helpful to me in pulling together many issues.

[David Morgan]

Michael,

I find the mention of plausibility structures interesting here as I have just come in at the end of the series.

Miroslav Volf in his After Our Likeness talks about the role of the others in church as creating plausibility structures. Have you read this and what do you think - it also touches on the issue of laity and clergy.

[Michael W. Kruse]

David, I haven't yet read After Our Likeness yet. I'm intrigued. Care to elaborate more?