Kurt Cobain by most standards was an overnight music sensation, but in his personal life, he was an emotional train wreck.  Caught up in overwhelming media hype and weighed down by the pressure of it all, he looked for a way to escape, but by his own admission couldn’t seem to find it on this side of eternity. 

In his suicide note he begged his wife Courtney Love not to follow him.  He admitted that he didn’t know where he was going, but insisted that he no longer could take it here.  His suicide note was like a gold mine of evidence against this sick and depraved culture and an indictment against our twisted train of thought.

At age 9, Kurt’s parents divorced and ironically, this is around the same time that he confessed that “he began to hate everyone.”  His words.

In the biography, “Heavier than Heaven,” it was reported that in 1974, Just around age seven, Kurt was put on Ritalin because he supposedly suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder(ADHD). Also in 1974, just a week after Kurt’s 7^th birthday, Wendy Cobain informed Husband Don of her desire for a divorce which was finalized July 9^th, 1976.  Iris Cobain, Kurt’s grandmother, would later describe the year of 1976 as, “Kurt’s year in purgatory.”

For children of divorced parents, it is the emotional equivalent of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or of having gone through combat for an adult.  And I don’t have to make this claim anecdotally, the evidence is there as described by the people who have lived through these traumas and mountains of statistical evidence.  Divorce, murder, suicide, it’s all there. 

There is a practical reason God said he hates divorce (Malachi 2:16, Bible), because it’s like tossing a fragmentation grenade into your living room and then expecting everyone in the room to not get ripped to shreds.  And I’m not saying that people don’t marry for the wrong reasons.  We’re human, we make mistakes, but that’s exactly why we need God.

That’s what God does, he fixes broken people with broken hearts.  He’s an expert at it and our culture has asked him to leave – stay out, you’re not welcome here.  And yet our world is imploding under the weight of our own depravity and selfishness.   We’re like a submarine that descends too far into the depths of the ocean and our hull is cracking under the pressure.  

In Kurt’s suicide note, he stated how he no longer felt the joy of listening or creating music anymore. He admitted that he is too sensitive, and how he has lost the enthusiasm he once had as a child.  He felt like he was so sad because he felt so much.  He was reminded by his daughter of how he used to look at life when he was a child and admitted that it terrified him to think of her ever becoming the “miserable, self-destructive death rocker” that he felt he had become.  He also stated that, “since the age of seven, I’ve become hateful towards all humans in general.  Only because it seems so easy for people to get along, and have empathy.  Empathy! Only because I love and feel for people too much I guess.”   He thanks everyone in general and ends his note with the sad cliché, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” 

A sad testimony from a talented young man who died far too early and left a wife and child with no answers.  Ironically, he specifically states in his suicide note that the age he started feeling this way was seven, the year of his parents split.  

Perhaps one of the sadist parts of this story was that he had discovered the answer less than ten years before hand when his father had placed him with some family friends because of his rebellion.  It was stated both in his biography “Heavier than Heaven” and the Wikipedia website that while he was living with the Reed family, he became a devout follower of Christ and regularly attended church services and even tried to guide his friends into giving up drugs and into a relationship with Christ.  However, he later renounced his faith and lived full speed ahead in a self-destructive lifestyle of heavy drugs and all types of anti-God behavior.    

While I’m sure many might argue that if he had the answer in Christ, then why did he renounce his faith?  Why did he quit if it was such a great answer?  Unfortunately, I can’t answer that other than to give you the standard biblical reasons why anyone does, and there are plenty.  Jesus himself said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter by the narrow gate.  For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.   For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” 

Maybe it was too easy for Kurt to slip back into his old ways, perhaps he was not courageous enough to endure the ridicule for being a follower.  Maybe he just got caught up in the hype of this world, but there are many arguments that do make sense on this side of the grave, but that doesn’t necessarily make them true.  They are just arguments which are rarely based upon anything more than opinion.

Christianity is not easy, it is not a life filled with butterflies and rainbows, but it is a life filled with hope and the promises of a future that only God can give both in this life and the next.  And regardless of whether, or not, you feel like Christianity is too rigid or has too many rules, or you just flat out don’t like Christians, it is true that we are all slaves to something. 

For Christians we are self-admitted servants to Christ and His playbook the Bible, but for others, servants to something else, but all of us servants none the less. 

Kurt’s short life of freedom from boundaries in the end became a short life of slavery to drugs and death.  In the end, his reckless pursuit of a drug-filled “Nirvana” became his prison where he not only locked himself up, but those who loved him as well.