Do the Gods *Actually* Care About Us, Anyway?

John Beckett over at Patheos has a great blog post called Do the Gods Care About Everyone? It raises some interesting questions about the relationship between Gods and humanity, so I thought I’d share my own thoughts here at Of Pomegranate & Poppy. 

Like Mr Beckett, I believe that referring to “the Gods” like they’re a unified whole is a bad habit left over from monotheism. Different Gods have different agendas and values; Set doesn’t want the same things as Horus, and Loki doesn’t want the same things as Thor. 

My viewpoint diverges on this- there are so many Gods out there that I simply can’t believe that every single one of them cares about humanity. Some Gods can be tricky and amoral, or They operate on morals that we don’t understand (see Set and Horus). Other Gods represent forces that are detrimental to humans. Does the God of hurricanes care about the lives it upends in its path? 

I have no idea. 

 Essentially, some Gods have priorities that are detached from our personal well-being, like the balance of nature or the execution of justice. Other Gods are uniquely tied to humanity and our desires. These are the types of Gods that defend a city (Athena), watch over mothers and children (Artemis), and hold sway over human relationships like love and marriage (Aphrodite and Hera). Wild Gods like Pan tend to be more concerned with the natural world than with human affairs. 

Still, humans can form deeply loving and intimate relationships with grand and even primordial Gods, as any polytheist will tell you. I think that it’s ridiculous to minimize that love, and I’ll end with a story about it. 

Once, I asked Demeter if She *actually* cares about a tiny human like me and She got furious in the way that only a mother can. She gave me one of those Do-you-have-any-idea-how-much-I’ve-done-for-you speeches and reminded me that She’s been watching over me since I was tiny. And I never made the mistake of asking again. Because although I’ve only officially been worshipping The Two Goddesses since I was a preteen, I’m almost certain that They’ve been around for longer. 

Persephone and Her mother have shown Their love for me and for humanity a million times, from giving us spring and the secrets of the grain to saving my life on multiple occasions. And I love Them more than anything. So at the end of the day, I don’t care if all of the Gods love all of humanity. I don’t care about the God of hurricanes. I care about the love between me and my Two Goddesses, and that love runs deep. 

In the Gods,

Rose Eleusis