What are they aiming at?

In the American society, we go through a hierarchy. The people at the top are doctors, lawyers, or scientists, while the people at the bottom are the homeless, the drug addicts, and women of the streets, or prostitutes. In his play, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Bertolt Brecht appears to switch this around, and makes the prostitute the person at the top of the list. Even though the play doesn't take place in America and it isn't related to American culture, this is still very strange.
Shen Te is a prostitute in Setzuan. The play revolves around her and the three gods. These three gods came to Setzuan to see who still believed in them. The gods say:

SECOND GOD: What did I tell you?
THIRD GOD: It could be pure coincidence.
SECOND GOD: The same coincidence in Shun, Kwan, and Setzuan? People just aren't religious anymore, lets face the fact. Our mission has failed. (7)

The gods feel like no one cares anymore and they are looking for a good person. When Wong, the water seller, is going from house to house asking people if they had room for the gods in their homes, everyone said no because they didn't want to, except Shen Te. Being a prostitute, she works by attending to men, and even though a man would be at her house that day, she said that she would let the gods come in. When the gods do enter her house, they declare her a good woman, and she denies their declaration. She tells them her story and why she does the things she does, and the gods feel sorry for her and try to help her pay the rent on her house.
What is strange in this play is that the gods claim that people aren't religious anymore. That they don't believe the gods exist, but they are right in front of them. If seeing is believing, what's the problem? Why aren't the people religious? It is clear that there is a problem with a dam, but even now if there's an earthquake or a hurricane, we don't stop believing in God. I will admit that there are times in my life when I ask why so many bad things happen, and even if I say well these are the consequences that we pay for our action, there are times where the people that suffered the consequences did no bad deeds. For example, the earthquake in Haiti. Those people go through hurricanes and all sorts of things every year, they are the poorest country in the west, but they still have tragedies. How could they deserve punishment year after year after year? This also happens in my personal life when I ask why did that happen? And as much as I try to figure out what I did to receive a punishment of the caliber, I can't figure it out. This is what might be happening in Setzuan, but just because I can't figure it out, I don't stop believing in God, so why have the people of Shun, Kwan, and Setzuan stopped believing in their gods?
One person, at least, still believes in the gods, and she is also a good person even though her profession indicates otherwise. When the gods reappear in Wong's dreams he tells them of all of Shen Te's good deeds, and the gods are happy. That is another strange thing in this play. As humans we tend to rely on God, those of us who believe, but the play makes it seem like the gods rely on humans.
I don't really know where this play is going. Hopefully we'll know once the second half of the play is read.

Works Cited

Brecht, Bertolt, and Eric Bentley. The Good Woman of Setzuan. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1999. Print.