I remember when Kurt Cobain died. It wasn't a where-were-you-when-JFK-was-shot moment, but I remember hearing the news and seeing the effects. My friend Amina was devastated; I watched her cry as she stared at the cover of Rolling Stone (above) that week. Perhaps that's what gets me when I think about Cobain, how his death hurt those around me. He was a gifted songwriter and musician in a great band. I can't say that he was the modern Mozart or the next Elvis, maybe he was just the canary in the coal mine. All I can say is that when I think about him, it makes me sad.
As a Christian, I struggle with the suffering in the world. More than anything, I hate Easy Answers that overlook the harsh realities of life (or, worse, blame those realities on the people who suffer them). One of my least favorite is "God never gives us things we can't handle." I think this is a kind of wishful thinking, an expression of how we hope God will treat us, but I can point to countless example of people who were given more than they could handle, people who bent and broke beneath the load.
A convenient [un]Christian response is to blame the victim, to say that a person simply didn't have enough faith (or perhaps not the right kind of faith). While there are times that this might be true, it's heartless to think that everyone who has ever been overcome by despair lacks the faith to see it through. Men and women of sincere faith can and have been driven to the edge and beyond by life, and perhaps by God.
Nor is it helpful to look at Cobain's life and death as nothing more than tragic vanity (this is what I may have done at the time). On the surface, his inability to cope with fame and the insane expectations of American consumer culture seemed like just another Counter-Culture Pose. An eternal optimist, it's too easy for me to dismiss such pain as self-induced. It's too easy to say, "Cheer up, stupid! Life getting you down? Change it!" Such Can-Do platitudes ignore complexities, they also ignore the realities of genuine mental illness. Worse than ignore, they place the blame for them squarely on the shoulders of those who suffer from them.
While I'm hesitant to make a messiah out of Cobain, I'm not afraid to ask the daring question: Did he die for us? I can't help but see his death as a warning to all of us against the invasive effects of consumerism and greed. We're all subject to the same ambitions our culture presses on us. We chase after success, wealth, power, and influence at the same time our subconscious is telling us to run away. We are in the exact place where Jesus was, when he was tempted in the desert. When offered the chance to be powerful, influential and important, as he was, we want to say "Yes!" But the true path leads us downward, not upward. We're meant to head towards humility and selflessness, until the only thing left is love. This is True Power.
Do we have the courage to say "No" to the enticements of the world? How are we to think of those who say "Yes?" What about those, like Kurt Cobain, who are caught between the two choices? Ultimately, his death may be a warning to all of us. Whatever else it was, is and may yet be, his death was a tragedy for his friends, his family and for me. Not because of who we has, but because:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (John Donne, Meditation XVII)That's what's on my mind this morning. Love to all.
