Ed Wier wrote this homage to his favorite religious satire magazine a few years ago. We think reading Ed's tale will remind you what life was like before you discovered The Door...and why it's important to keep it coming.

It had to have been divine providence. The year was 1977, and I was studying for the ministry at a small, private conservative Bible college in Birmingham, Ala. We all had to act, think and look like the kind of young Christian men and women the financial contributors would continue to support. The rules were legion. They told us that obeying the many rules (such as wearing ties on Sunday) didn't make us spiritual, but the unspoken rule was you can't be spiritual if you don't. Maybe the fact that I was a Polish Catholic from New Jersey and Mickey Rooney was married in the administration building were interweaving omens.

Unbeknownst to me, I was on a collision course with a publication.

Rowe Memorial Library was actually a 100-year-old house that was bending and buckling under the weight of thousands of books. My soul was beginning to feel the weight as well. The librarian, Miss Taft, not only had the typical librarian look, but also had that extra Christian twist about her which seemed to say, "I don't allow dog-earring systematic theology books and neither does God!" I'm sure all librarians wish they had God on their side.

Like most diligent freshmen, I spent many lonely hours in that old building spraining my brain on Greek assignments and theological paradoxes, but the silence only seemed to echo my incompetence. It was just like God to pick the hardest language on earth. Oftentimes, I would sit in the old vinyl chairs near the periodicals and rest my whimpering mind, which was stretched to the breaking point somewhere between Calvinism and Arminianism. There was only one magazine rack holding the latest issues of Moody Monthly, Christianity Today, and...then I saw it. Looking as out of place as Bob Tilton in front of a cross or Benny Hinn bald was – The Door, called The Wittenburg Door at the time.

I lifted it cautiously, noticed the amateurish cover, opened it, and drank. At first I was confused. My natural God-given desire to categorize, pigeon-hole, typecast, catalogue, rank and even create a new denomination if necessary was short circuited. Then I was more confused. My mind filled with doubt. I chuckled. I felt a tinge of what I believe now was Southern Baptist shame, but I kept reading.

Then I became real confused. But soon I was glad to be confused, as my laughter echoed across the sagging, wooden floors. Finally, my mind turned into a spiritual food fight. Paradoxes melted and Greek verbs fled as I howled with laughter. Miss Taft gave me the holy eye, but I read every word. I wasn't alone anymore and The Door became my constant companion. It greased my spiritual gears and glued my spiritual pieces. I had found a place where I could be both human and spiritual. I was finally and forever free to acknowledge the absurdities that surrounded me. That magazine single-pagedly got me through college.

On campus, attitudes toward The Door varied from super to sacrilegious but I didn't care. My mind clanged like a $1,000 pledge bell on TBN every time I saw the cover of a new issue. I savored every sip of medicine for my bones. I somehow knew that there was an innate humor at the core of existence and that I had a God-given right to respond with laughter. I began to see satire as the irreplaceable handmaid of truth, or at least a sidekick.

After getting the inside scoop on the ministry, I decided to not become a professional Christian. But I did stay in school, although I almost didn't graduate. Good grades, which I had, were only part of the requirements. Each student had to be reviewed before a board to determine if his or her character would adequately represent the school. One Door-enemy-type teacher had it out for me, but God had the last laugh and I got my walking papers.

I brought The Door with me and subscribed for many years. But somewhere in all the details of adult life, I let my subscription expire. My life then took on a drab, lifeless quality. I had all the enthusiasm of a Jew on Christmas eve or a butcher at a vegetarian restaurant, an Amish electrician, a Calvinist insurance salesman, a terrorist humorist, a Unitarian separatist, a lesbian cosmetologist, a New-Age historian, a Church of Christ piano tuner, a Hasidic oyster diver, a Masonic blabbermouth, a dispensational reconstructionist, a Mormon bachelor, an obsessive-compulsive diplomat, a Dead-Head tailor, (By the way....What does a Dead-Head say at a Grateful Dead concert when he runs out of pot? "Man! This band sucks!") a male psychic, a hermaphrodite sex counsellor. But now my face is lighting up again like a neon cross since I am reunited (...and it feels so good!) with The Door, and I can only hope that somewhere, amidst all the pompous, crazy, God-forsaken, greedy absurdities of the religious world, a ruler-toting Bible college librarian is giving some poor paradox-laden young believer the blessed evil-eye as he tries to control his own God-born laughter.

Thanks, Ed. As you can see, the fate of thousands hinges on The Door... so to speak. But to be able to continue publishing our bimonthly compendium of religious humor, we need you to subscribe, re-subscribe, sign up your friends ... and then sign up THEIR friends. After we first told you of our financial crunch last summer, hundreds of you sent in more than $30,000. Recently, a small foundation in California donated thousands more. We're preparing a direct-mail subscription campaign that we hope can keep us financially healthy for the long haul. Until then, you can send a tax-deductible donation to our publisher, Trinity Foundation, PO Box 33, Dallas TX 75221 so The Door can keep encouraging and entertaining laughter-starved souls like Ed Wier... and me... and you.