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DISCUSSGersztyn Sweeps February Indulgence Awards
| 03/02/2008Bob Gersztyn, who describes himself as an acid-dropping hippie from the sixties, is the winner of the February Indulgence Awards, the coveted document from the Doorkeeper granting 7,777 days off your Purgatory sentence for the Best Freelance Article of the Month. (Only freelancers are eligible. Everyone working in the office has to do their time until liberated by Luther, and Luther is dead.)
Gersztyn wrote “Jesus and Larry and Me,” the heartfelt essay on his 37-year experience with the late Christian rocker Larry Norman, first as a devoted fan and then as a member of his entourage and finally as a friend who could never be sure of his place in Larry’s heart. In the course of working on the piece, Bob read for the first time the 1976 Door interview with Larry Norman, and he decided to clear up a common myth about the Jesus Movement:
“In that interview Larry says the same thing believed by Barry McGuire another singer, originally with the New Christy Minstrels, later the first anti-war singer, since 1971 a gospel artist. About four years ago I pissed off Barry so much that he broke off our interview, before it ever got started, and it was when I started to talk about drugs. I was an acid-dropping Hippie in the 60's, and I know that the Jesus Movement happened because of this, because it's what led me and everyone I knew to religion. LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and marijuana created the Jesus Movement. Larry says in his interview that it didn't. He's wrong. 
I was part of it, and so was everyone that I knew in LA, and Calvary Chapel, including all the groups from Maranatha. Chuck Girard dropped acid over 500 times, he told me in an interview that will never get published. Keith Green accepted Jesus on acid. Odin Fong of Mustard Seed Faith took 100 doses of LSD and saw Jesus in the desert. Mike MacIntosh, one of the key ministers from Calvary Chapel, became a Christian as a result of a bad LSD trip.”
And now that we’ve straightened that out, we can name the Lesser Indulgences for February:
First runner-up: John Green receives three weeks of not having to go to confession for his inspired revelation that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is actually Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, in disguise. John also unearthed Ted Haggard’s letter from rehab in Arizona, confessing his weak yet heterosexual spiritual state.
Second runner-up: Jennifer Morrow receives a lifetime exemption from Hail Marys, which she won’t really need because her article, “You Know You’re Too Jewish,” was made possible only by the fact of her being the token Door Jew.
Third runner-up: Dave Werther’s “Praying at Burger King,” an expert parody on the pop-culture spiritualism of Richard Mouw, has been deemed the equivalent of three pilgrimages to Lourdes, which he is now free to replace with three pilgrimages to Las Vegas.
Fourth runner-up: Al Speegle Jr. gets automatic forgiveness for any sin involving a topless bar in return for his two articles, one revealing Benny Hinn’s email investment prospects, and another announcing the new Mo Willems children’s book, Don’t Let the Pigeon Girl Preach!
Fifth runner-up: Door veteran Dale Dobson is granted beachfront property in the afterlife as a result of his take on faith-based sales pitches, “God Doesn’t Suck But His Vacuum Sure Does.”
If you want to ensure your place in Satire Heaven, you should send those articles to Bob Darden, who compiles an impressive spiral notebook that is periodically submitted to the Door Sanhedrin, which deliberates and pontificates and plays Pin The Tail on the Freelancer in order to create that special Literary Frito Pie that we call The Wittenburg Door.
Has anyone from the Door won this award or even been nominated? If no one has you have been robbed. I nominate the "It's a God thing" article.
Dutifully yours
My B.S. alarm goes to a state of high alert anytime somebody:
- speaks in all-encompassing terms, i.e., drugs were used by "everybody I knew" in the Jesus Movement
- they use numbers that are very large (Girard's "over 500" acid trips - somebody was counting?)
From my experiences with drugs and drug users, too, there is the very obvious issue that the very use of these things makes testimony highly suspect. Yeah, when you are using, "everybody I know" is using, too! Hundreds of times! Maybe thousands! Did you know that all the major Presidential candidates also dropped acid? And Martin Luther was eating ergot in his rye bread? It's true! Well, if "truth" is perception, then what Mr. Gersztyn says is probably what he believes to be the case, but I wouldn't bet the farm on the reliability of his account.
I can't help being reminded Mike Warnke's fabricated tale of his Satanist past, similarly full of extravagant claims. Cornerstone Magazine drove a stake through the heart of those lies with thorough investigation. Dunno if that's the Door's style, though, to dig a little deeper?
Now, I'm sure many Jesus People had drug use in their background, and would say as much. Maybe most of them, given the tenor of the times. Looking around my midwestern Lutheran church today, I know plenty of my brothers and sisters have substance abuse in their past or present. The claim that drug experience is the foundation of conversion and faith, though, is a radical and, to use a term that is out of date but I can't help thinking is appropriate, blasphemous assertion. ("he casts out demons by Beelzebul", sort of like "it's not the Holy Spirit, it's the acid?" What do you think?)
Okay, substitute all the "alls" to "many", but Chuck did tell me 500, and I have it on tape. Odin's story was on his website, plus I heard him tell it in concert a number of times. Why would drug use make someone's statements suspect. Even though I used drugs, I wasn't always under their influence. Plus I quit using drugs on July 3, 1971, and all these statements were after that. I estimate that I took well over 100 trips and I was either attending college full time or working full time. So if you were living off Royalties, which Chuck was, then you could trip every day.
....having given Mr. G a pretty hard time above, though, do read his excellent article the Door published. Feet of clay, sins, or weirdness are part of the humanity of Christian artists too.
I was a regular drug user in college in the 80's. Mostly pot, acid several times, mushrooms, the usual college suspects. Funny, I don't recall seeing Jesus at any of those times or even feeling remotely close to him...although there was that one time on top of a mountain on a crystal clear night with zero light pollution and no humidity where for the first and only time in my life I understood why it is called the Milky Way...but I digress. Anybody got a joint?
That's because you needed to get some stimuli, to move you in the right direction. One night while I was stoned in 1969, I was listening to WABX, the local underground radio station in Detroit, at the time. Next to it was a Christian radio station, somehow the channel changed from one to the other, and I found myself listening to gospel music for 10 minutes before I realized that the station had changed. Then there was Jesus Christ Superstar, while on acid or smoking weed. Plus the Good News For Modern Man that the guy in the bunk next to me, in the Army gave me. I read it while I was stoned, so I had lots of Jesus input.
Congrats Bob and Al...I don't know you other folk as you've NEVER post in "the Closet". ;)
Let us know when the ceremony takes place, I'll try to be there with Evil Rob...
Eric
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