Wasted Blues

     "Don't worry, be happy"—the creedal cry of a generation.  Actually it's not something to believe but another law; and contained in the admonition is absolutely no power whatsoever to do what it is asking. The affluence of American culture has somehow facilitated the belief that one shouldn't be sad, and has an inalienable right to happiness, not its pursuit but its certain acquisition and maintenance.

     This philosophy, of course, has nothing in common with Christianity and the "already/not yet" tension of the Kingdom.  We already have hope, hope in a future and final redemption, the redemption of our souls and our bodies.  So we should expect times of melancholy and sadness because we are not yet what we will be.  And even more so for the unbeliever who actually has no lasting hope.

     In our culture there seems to be no room for the "blues" or for legitimate sadness.  You can observe in many places, the occasional frustration against this sort of unrealistic denial of the human's real tendency to depression.  One such occurrence I believe was the evolution of popular American music in the 80's.  At least in the "Rock" music realm we see the superficial happiness of "Hair Bands" like Cinderella, Ratt, Skid Row and Poison, with which the market came to a critical mass causing the onset of bands like Guns and Roses, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana and Soundgarden, who undeniably interjected a bit more realism into the artistic expression of a culture that had become weary of pretending to be happy and pleased all the time.  Of course, the knee jerk reaction of the "Grunge" band scene, which really flowed seemlessly from an underground stream of early "Punk" (The Clash, Black Flag, etc) and "Heavy Metal" (Sabbath, and Metalica), erred in the opposite direction—suicidal tendencies.
     So we should conclude that sadness, mourning and melancholy are to be expected, never meditated on producing dispair, but ever drive the believer back to the gospel, and hopefully drive, for the first time, the unbeliever to the cross.