“I miss the comfort in being sad.”
— “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” by Nirvana
When it comes to music, I am very much a child of the 90s. Although I was born in a different era, I didn’t really connect with a particular genre until “alternative music” hit the scene. Originating primarily in the bleak overcast climate of Seattle, Washington, alternative music or, more specifically, “grunge,” was characterized by gritty power chords, somber melodies, and depressing, introspective lyrics.
For someone who had spent most of his life lost in his own thoughts, it was a near instantaneous love affair. My younger sister actually introduced me to the joys of alternative music when we were living in Irving, Texas. She had always been something of a kindred spirit to me when it came to creative thoughts and poetic viewpoints of life, and I soon found myself borrowing her cassette tapes (yes, those were actually still a thing back in the early 90s) to share in her music.
Over time, I began to identify more and more with the grunge “movement,” growing out my hair, donning the required black Doc Martens and flannel shirts, and buying an electric guitar. I listened to all the prominent bands such as Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then discovered my own personal favorites in lesser known groups like Dinosaur Jr., Catherine Wheel, Tripping Daisy, and Buffalo Tom. I spent many an hour trying to learn the intricacies of these songs on a made-in-Mexico Stratocaster.
Although there was something borderline intellectual about the music — bands like the Lemonheads, for instance, were born out of the college music scene — and though learning an instrument was certainly a valuable experience, there existed a dark underbelly to many of the songs that provided a negative outlook on life.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand this. I was caught up in the guitars and long hair and poetic structure of the lyrics and felt that these sort of tunes signified the most “genuine” expression of music available. That the vast majority of the songs addressed depression, drugs, alcoholism, illicit sex, broken relationships and a nihilistic worldview seemed to indicate only that the songwriters were being truthful about the less flowery side of life.
Truth be told, I had felt some of this bleakness myself, recognizing from an early age that the world around me was not quite what I had imagined it to be. Though I was not a drug or alcohol abuser and had only endured a single case of a broken heart, I had experienced the daunting loneliness and sorrow consistent with modern living, and in these artists it seemed that I had found kindred spirits who truly understood my struggle.
In some ways, there was an odd security in this shared suffering, a strange camaraderie mirroring the old adage of “misery loves company.” Despite the shock of the drug overdoses and suicides of musical heroes like Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell, I found that I actually desired this dark introspection, that there was something unusually comforting in dwelling in the darkness.
As a Christian, this desire was obviously difficult to reconcile. I had grown up believing in God’s mercy and grace and had always understood that we were supposed to “rejoice always”[1] no matter what life brought our way. Looking at life instead from a “cup half empty” perspective did not sit well with my biblical upbringing.
In retrospect, I think the primary reason for my fascination with this sort of negativity was my sinful nature. From birth we are sinful beings — literally “objects of wrath”[2] — and many of our normal inclinations stand opposed to those of our Creator. Satan enjoys tormenting us and taking our eyes away from the remarkable grace bestowed on us by God, and he uses whatever means available to achieve his goals. In my case, it was this particularly depressing genre of music.
It’s interesting to note, though, that sorrow, in and of itself, is not necessarily evil. Isaiah, prophesying about the coming Messiah, describes him as “a man of sorrows.”[3] In the gospels, we see Jesus embody this definition, crying out in sorrow over Jerusalem, weeping over the death of his friend Lazarus, and being moved to action on behalf of a widow’s dead son outside the town of Nain. And on the eve of his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus felt the depths of loneliness, isolation, and dejection, stating to his closest disciples that “my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”[4]
I think it’s clear from these examples that God never intended for his people to be unfeeling towards the fallen world around them. We are to care for what happens to us and others – and that caring oftentimes includes sadness.
There’s an important difference, though, in how Christians and nonbelievers view this sorrow. As Christians, we know that our sadness is temporary and a consequence of living in a lost world. We understand that Christ has paid the price for all of our pain and suffering, and that, through him, we have the promise of a future life spent in eternal bliss. We no longer have to sit and dwell in our darker moments, finding some form of “bliss” through shared negativity and hopelessness. Like Paul, we can move beyond our misery, knowing that “godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret,” while sorrow from the world’s perspective “brings death.”[5]
That’s a truth that Cobain and Cornell unfortunately understood only too late.
[1] I Thessalonians 5:16.
[2] Romans 9:22.
[3] Isaiah 53:3.
[4] Mark 14:34.
[5] 2 Corinthians 7:10.