A couple of days ago, I spent 5+ hours sitting in a dentist chair. I can think of lots of ways that I wouldn’t mind spending that much time, but being at the dentist is NOT on that list. There are few things in life that I dread more than going there. I wonder at times if dentists aren’t actually military operatives specializing in torture tactics and their dental practice is simply a cover. Anyway, while sitting there for 5 hours feeling that all in my life has gone awry, I had a chance to do some deep thinking while the dentist was doing some deep drilling. Here are a few spiritual observations:
CAVITIES CAN BE PREVENTED (THEORETICALLY) - All the dentists will tell you that simple maintenance can help you avoid the troublesome development of cavities. That may not always be true, but it certainly is true most of the time. Spiritually speaking, maintenance of spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible reading, fasting) can go a long way toward keeping us healthy and preventing real damage. But we frequently look at those things as optional or necessary only in the case of emergency. And when we neglect the basic maintenance, we WILL find ourselves regretting it at some later date.
CAVITIES CAN BE REPAIRED, BUT IT REQUIRES SOME WORK AND MAYBE A BIT OF PAIN - Once a cavity has formed, it becomes something that becomes very detrimental to the health of the tooth. Fortunately it can be fixed, but it’s no longer as simple as basic maintenance and there will be some evidence. When we allow sin to creep into our lives unabated because we have failed to exercise daily maintenance through spiritual disciplines, it can be fixed. But there will often be a bit of pain involved and frequently will leave some scars behind.
WHEN CAVITIES HAVE GONE UNCHECKED TOO LONG, MAJOR WORK HAS TO DONE TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE - Unfortunately for me, I had a cavity that I allowed to linger for too long. I don’t like going to the dentist in the first place and I thought it would be expensive. Well, by the time I got around to dealing with it, it was no longer a simple cavity, but a root canal, which is far more costly than a cavity. Spiritual decay can look a lot like that. We don’t want to deal with the problem because it seems to difficult and maybe even costly. But unless we take care of it, it will continue to worsen. And then we have a problem that requires serious effort and in all likelihood a lot of pain in order to fix it. And even then, the repair doesn’t take us back to the original condition. Functionality is still there, but something has been lost.
SOMETIMES THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO REMOVE THE PROBLEM ENTIRELY - I’ve got a wisdom tooth that needs to be extracted. I was at the dentist so long, we didn’t even get to that one. But I have to go back to have it done. Occasionally we get to that point in our lives with spiritual hurdles. Sometimes we just have to remove them completely from our lives…leave no trace, and wait for the hole to heal.
PROFESSIONAL ASSESSMENT - If I were a torturer..I mean dentist, and I were making an assessment of your spiritual dental health, where would you be. Are you taking care of the routine maintenance with joy because you realize the benefits? Do you have a cavity or two that need some repair? Have you allowed a few things to go unchecked too long to the point where there may be some real pain? Do you have any challenges in your life (or maybe even people) that need to be extracted? Remember that the longer you wait on any of these things, the larger the problem becomes. So don’t forget to floss.
April 26th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Dude that is a amazing analogy. I’ve had both spiritual root canals and the actual root canals not fun at all. So I an sympathize with you. I am totally all about taking care of my teeth … now. It is kinda pathetic that it takes a pain to get us to realize something is wrong. However pain only shows us two things. One we are not dead. Two that we are still sensitive and haven’t grown calloused.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Well said Chad. I like that you stated the benefits of pain. None of us enjoy it…nor do we look forward to it. But there are some inherent values in pain. I completely agree though that it’s a shame that it takes pain to motivate us to action in far to many situations.