Sitting on an Angry Chair

A couple weekends ago we got sucked into watching some show on VH1 about the music of the 90's. I tried to resist but there's no getting around the fact that I am a sucker for any kind of countdown show.

Since the 90's was the decade of my college years, that music has pretty much stuck with me. I like 80's music, and there's nothing better than 70's classic rock, but the music of the 90's would make up a lot of my life soundtrack.

As the countdown got closer to number one I noticed that the songs got angrier and angrier. Each song was a commentary on society and how much that band or lead singer hated the world around them. I thought about it and I realized that at the time I thought that I was most happy when I was angry. It was cool to be angry. So, after a tough week of classes I would return to my dorm and crank up some of the angriest stuff I had on hand. Little did I know that that stuff did a number on my then immature faith in Christ.

Now, the music I listened to never made me do anything that I shouldn't have, it just seemed to have an influence on my thought life. I'm not sure if I would describe what was happening in my mind as a battle of worldviews, but I was soon discovering that there wasn't much room in there for the two of them.

Today I still have most of the CD's that I bought in college. (Sometimes I wonder if the BMG CD club stayed in business thanks to me.) Some of the stuff I still listen to, others have collected a lot of dust. What has changed for me since then is where I turn to answer life's questions. Trent Reznor, Kurt Cobain, and Layne Staley asked some great questions back then, but none of them had very good answers. I've found that that the truth rests in what God has chosen to reveal to us through His Word and through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Thinking about it all now, I have to agree with Homer Simpson when he said to the Smashing Pumpkins on the Hulabalooza tour: "I'll miss you Pumpkins, but I just can't share your bleak world view."