WHY IS POLYTHEISM NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART?
This was a question asked of me by a friend and student during our breakout in a class I’m teaching on Pre Babylonian exilic Judaism.
I gave her one answer that relates to my lack of belief that things are ordered in the universe or better are headed in a certain direction. You know that famous saying of Martin Luther King that the arc of justice is long but it bends towards justice?
It’s a comforting thought, but I don’t believe it in my soul, in my body. And since I don’t believe that, how can I endorse some kind of monotheism where the power resides in someone who should have the capacity to make that happen? I can embrace something like the idea of the Tao, an impersonal force that isn’t good or bad. I do believe that there is a system as a whole, but that really isn’t saying much, since all I’m saying is that beings interact with each other in an infinite web.
My body says, my head believes, that random garbage happens in life, and some of it just sucks. That’s true on a personal level—is there any kid who deserves to be abused? And it is true on a national level—do most of us really deserve Donald Trump? What about non Americans, who just watch appalled and wonder what in the world is going on here? Do all the beings who are adversely impacted by climate change deserve to pay for the arrogance and stupidity of humanity? Of course not. And I absolutely can’t reconcile all that with some kind of deity who is a supreme power.
The world seems to me much more like a jostling of powers greater than me, some good, some bad, most just being powerful without moral valence. Does the deep cold we are in have a moral valence? Of course not, but is it greater than I am? Of course. That intuition is captured by polytheism far better than monotheism. So I am all in favor of reviving the polytheism of our ancestors, most of whom were polytheistic before the Babylonian exile.
I think of the world in a gendered way. This is a second reason polytheism is near and dear to my heart. I know seeing the world in a gendered way is problematic for some of my readers. I once had someone say in my presence that there are infinite genders. I completely disagree. There are beings, human and otherwise, who are a mix of male and female and they should be treated with dignity. But I believe there are two basic genders, even as the expressions of being male or female are infinite. There’s no question of the toxicity of forcing someone into a gender role that doesn’t fit them well, but that doesn’t challenge the idea of two basic genders with an infinity of ways to express those genders.
Since I believe in gender as an organizing principle of the universe, how can I believe in a male God without a female counterpart? Further, how could I believe in some kind of non gendered being who supposedly is beyond gender? Careful readers will note that I always use male pronouns when I talk about YHVH—and that is because He is portrayed as a male being, for better or worse.
Androgenous Gods/Goddesses are possible. I talk about El Shaddai, the many breasted God, as an androgenous deity, because El is male and Shaddai is female breasts. Kuan Yin (or Cannon in Japan) the Buddhist God/Goddess of mercy in East Asia is another perfect example of a deity who is something portrayed as male and sometimes as female.
Polytheism is near and dear to my heart because it matches my intuitive sense of the universe. Now your intuitive sense isn’t mine. Maybe some kind of all powerful male being makes more intuitive sense to you. Maybe some kind of non gendered, non personalized power makes sense. There’s a big part of me that thinks that our theological/metaphysical conclusions simply come from who we are, and then we find arguments to justify our conclusions.
