Give Yourself a Hug

Last week I went to see Carlos Santana up in Baltimore, which was fun.  It adds to the list of former Woodstock participants I have managed to see before they die.  Santana is a really great guitar player, but if you know anything about his career you might notice that while he has one really huge hit: Black Magic Woman, he has more or less crafted an almost 50 year career in music out of more or less mediocre song writing. In fact, his single biggest commercial and critical success Supernatural, is an album where he basically plays guitar for other already established artists.  And it's really good, from front to back, because Carlos sticks to playing that axe and lets other people sing and write and otherwise improve their own art by adding his Latin flavored guitar awesomeness.
And boy, can he still play that thang.
But, as with many artists who are approaching 70 and have enjoyed a long, successful career, he tends to get a bit self indulgent.  He let his son hijack the set for three full songs with a sort of latin-rock-rap hybrid thing which placed the formerly standing audience firmly back in their chairs.  Also the jam sessions during the encore went beyond the realm of blazing and into the realm of "enough already."  Santana's audience is getting older, and/or very drunk/high, and up past their bedtime.  Ten o'clock is time to pull the plug.
But the piece of over-indulgence I was really amused about was the little sermon he gave about halfway through the experience.  He began by telling us to give ourselves a hug.  I was actually fairly pleased he didn't pull what some churches do and tell us to hug each other.  Spending three hours shoulder to shoulder with masses of people in varying stages of intoxication was about all I wanted of human contact.  He told us that all this stuff about being wretched sinners and not being worthy of the grace of God was B.S.  I'm okay with about half of that statement, I agree that the idea that we are not worthy or beyond the reach of God's grace is actually a total misapprehension of what God's grace is all about.  If we weren't sinners though, we really wouldn't be in need of grace. In fact, I would say that the very reason we need God's grace is because we are wretched sinners, and no that doesn't disqualify us from God's love, it should make us all that much more grateful for it.
Carlos then misquoted Jesus and launched into a prosperity Gospel type rant about how if you want to be one of the five percent who truly succeed in life, you have just look at yourself in the mirror and refuse to fail, at the crescendo of this diatribe he says, "I am a beam of light from the mind of God!"  To the thunderous applause of the audience, or at least I think they were applauding, I was laughing too hard to tell.
Don't get me wrong, this little speech did not lower Santana in my esteem.  I did not sit there the rest of the show and fume about his theological failure, I went right back to enjoying his ability to play the guitar.  In fact, if anything I love the guy a little more, because he gave me such a sparkling and simple way to mock the pernicious and self-centered religion of self-esteem and positive thinking.  It is great fun to hold up my hand in a sort of mock priestly gesture and say, "I am a beam of light from the mind of God."  Seriously, try it, but don't try to do it seriously, be aware of the fact that theologically speaking it is only true enough to be dangerous.
I appreciate Carlos' intentions, to try and help us be cool and groove with him, and elevate our consciousness and all that sort of thing.  The difficulty in this sort of thing comes with trying to rigorously examine the logic and theology of such statements.  You can accept that we are each inherently worthy in God's sight, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, but when you make that a sort of super-power, you're going off the rails.
When I was 18, a friend and I were backpacking on the Appalachian Trail and we ran into an old hippie who called himself Uncle John.  If you have any familiarity with the Grateful Dead, you will probably recognize the song Uncle John's Band.  Uncle John had an entire theosophy and cosmology that he had invented. It was part millennial Christianity, part Buddhism and part Scientology, though as an 18 year old, I had no ability to sort all that out.  He claimed to be the guy that the Dead wrote the song about though, and I thought that was freaking cool.  He was thru-hiking the AT, and I thought that was cool too.  We spent an evening around the campfire with him, listening to his tale and his ramblings, and then we separated.  I had so many questions after that, and I think, in some part those questions led me to pursue the discipline of studying theology, because surely there had to be some answers out there.
Now, I could answer all the questions eighteen year old me had while standing on my head or chemically altered or before drinking my morning coffee.  They were simply, laughable really, sort of like "I am a beam of light from the mind of God," which is intended to be deep, but is really very shallow.  But I have new questions now, questions about suffering and the difficult task of forgiveness and acceptance.  It's much harder to accept who you really are as a sinner and as someone who once had their mind blown by some incoherent old stoner, but it is necessary.  It is necessary to recognize the failure of inadequate theology without judging those for whom it seems a beam of light from the mind of God.
Over the years I have found that the real challenge of theology is to be rigorous and gentle at the same time.  Be kind to those who believe differently.  Be loving to those who get a stupid or false idea lodged in their head. Know that most truth is not easily distilled into slogans and mantras, and if you try to do it, be prepared, because your understanding is fragile and God carries a sledgehammer, and is rather fond of using it.  As C.S. Lewis said, and I am fond of repeating, "God is the great iconoclast." "Good" theology is always a process of being broken and picking up the pieces.
Worry when the breaking stops, when you're very sure and when your questions disappear.