Jason Pitzl-Waters linked a few days back to an LA Times article by Mary Lefkowitz arguing that we’d all be better off going back to worshiping the Greek pantheon. Not too long ago, I read John Michael Greer’s book on polytheism, A World Full of Gods, an apologetics of sorts for the pagan community.

Standard monotheism has the problem of explaining how an all-powerful, all-benevolent, all-knowing god can allow good people to suffer. Polytheisms don’t have a god with that job description, so the question should be moot, say both Greer and Lefkowitz.

More fascinating to me is Greer’s argument that our individual experiences of the divine are better described by polytheism. Think of all the times you’ve had profound spiritual experiences. Was the context different? The content? The location? The feeling?

Greer says there’s no reason to assume each of those experiences is an experience of one all-encompassing divinity. A different spiritual experience indicates a different god.

So I’ve spent some time reflecting on some of the spiritual experiences I’ve had, experiences that were sublimely comforting, profoundly unsettling, or deeply limiting. Here are the experiences that came to mind, and the gods they link to: 

• A spirit of community that upholds and nurtures me. (Relationality, mutuality, and reciprocity.)
• Untrammeled righteous anger at evil and injustice that wants to destroy everything in its path. (Kali, Yahweh.)
• A sublime feeling that a spirit that underlies and connects all. (The Tao, the Holy Spirit.)
• Frustration that forces beyond our control work to feed their own power at our expense. (Market-as-god, the gnostics’ Demiurge, Empire, Walter Wink’s Powers-That-Be.)
• Assurance that the universe bends toward compassion. (Kwan Yin, the Virgin Mary.)
• Peace while sitting next to gently running creeks. (Kami)
• Profoundly good and bad luck that creates or destroys opportunities and entire life paths. (Tricksters.)

These are all experiences that in crucial ways were beyond my control. Which is not to say I was overpowered—I played my own part in them, as did others. Even though we were behind the wheel, we individuals were not steering the car.

At other times, I’ve longed for power beyond myself to overcome obstacles (Ganesh) — the televangelical prosperity movement plays off this — and for a enveloping sense of peace and rest (perhaps Kwan Yin and Mary again).

If the gods are divine characters I need to believe in, then I don’t believe in gods. If gods are forces beyond my control that exercise defining effects on my life, then I am learning to acknowledge, reluctantly, the powers of the gods in this ad hoc pantheon in my life.