Barbara Kingsolver: How To Be Hopeful - Essay Example

Question 1.
Most dictionaries give three different basic definitions of a paradigm. One such online source mentions that a paradigm is a pattern or model in science, and a set of inflectional forms of a word in grammar, but the most useful definition is the third, more general one: “a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline” (The Free Dictionary, no date). This comprehensive definition is very good because it covers the complex social dimension that this word implies. In the movie Grand Canyon, for example, certain characters appear who intervene to avert disaster. It is possible to see those characters like angels, using a Judaeo Christian religious paradigm, or as reincarnated ancestors using an animist paradigm, as elements of pure chance using an atheistic paradigm, or just as tools to move the plot along using a film studies paradigm. Each alternative reveals a different aspect of these characters.

The concept of a paradigm shift refers to what happens when people switch from one paradigm to another. An example of a major paradigm shift in history is, for example, when sailors first sailed around the world and discovered that the earth is not flat and that you do not fall off the edge if you sail too far in one direction. In this case, new evidence was found that contradicted the old world view that people held. Sometimes, however, the evidence is not very clear, or people are very attached to their old paradigms, and in these situations, multiple paradigms can coexist all at the same time. When studying Theology, the paradigm that prevails is not one of faith, but of inquiry, and so the student has to lay aside personal beliefs and use academic tools to write essays. Paradigms allow people to look at things in different ways, and this is very educational.

Question 8.
When a person uses texts for devotional use, they do so within the paradigm of a particular religious community. Muslims draw inspiration from the Koran, Jewish people from the Talmud, and Christians from the Bible. The community in each case defines the way that these texts should be interpreted, and there are even sub-groups within each faith that operate on slightly different paradigms. Sacred texts have this very special and personal function, and academic study is not intended to replace this, but it can certainly add to a person’s understanding by bringing out new facts.

In the contemporary world, with globalization and the migration of people across large areas, most communities have people with different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. Sacred texts all have a historical basis and a connection with the practices and beliefs of people through the ages. In the modern world, we have techniques to study even ancient languages and ideas, bringing out meanings and comparing one with the other. Coherence comes from seeing a text within its own context and drawing out what it means there. The other side of this is being able to look at sacred texts from other cultures and regions and times and using these same analytical tools to gain understanding from them also.

There are many different kinds of Church in the world, and God is much bigger than the idea of Him that any pastor, however, learned, can hold in his head. In the novel, the local teacher Kikongo likens the message that Pastor Nathan Price brings to the gift of a cooking pot “You already had a cooking pot you liked well enough, but maybe this new one is bigger… Or maybe the new cooking pot has a hole in the bottom” (Kingsolver, 2002, p. 286). This passage illustrates how religion is culturally conditioned, and how local preferences and local needs are different. The metaphor of the cooking pot shows that people’s perceptions of scriptures will be colored by their own needs, and by the meanings that they attach to things. Baptism in the Congo, where rivers are full of crocodiles, is not the enticing proposition to local people as it might be in a desert land like ancient Palestine!