I submit for the jury that tooth/mouth pain has to be one of the worst pains a human can experience. Maybe I am just being a baby about it, but owwww! What did people do before modern dentistry and endodontics?

This past week I found out that I had a horrible infection just below one of my molars. That infection was pressing upon my tooth and basically reducing me to a babbling three-year old. At first I thought the tooth ache could be sinus related as it started prior to the weekend and my wife and daughter had just been sick. But as it grew more severe over the weekend (and my whining increased) my wife insisted that I go and see our favorite local dentist. After seeing me and my x-ray for all of five minutes I was sent to a local endodontist, who proceeded to drill into said tooth in order to correct the previous root canal and treat the infection. All that to say…Ouch! Who knew such debilitating pain could be derived from one tooth infection? I can’t imagine going through this prior to the modern era of Novocaine and Tylenol-3. That root, or rather that root infection was enough to take me out of commission completely (not that it necessarily takes much, but you get the point).

In his letter to young Timothy (I think Timothy is one of those people we think about in the Bible as being perpetually young), Paul makes mention of “root theory”, as I will call it. In 1 Timothy 6:9-10 he writes, “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” And most of us have heard that adage before, “the love of money is the root of all evil”, but Paul says it slightly different. The desire for wealth is the root of all kinds of evil. Still seems pretty expansive though.

After experiencing that all encompassing effects of root damage I think I have started to understand what Paul is speaking about here. Granted, Paul probably had very little dental knowledge, but he had to understand a little bit of botany to make the reference. My tooth was completely rendered ineffective and useless because of it’s root issue (to this moment it is still pretty useless). Most plants, if the root is shot, whither and die pretty quickly. Likewise if our lives become consumed with the growth and acquisition of wealth we become virtually ineffective. I have seen some amazing Christians become consumed by their desire for more and fall away from an amazing calling on their life, Jesus even said in Matthew 16:26, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

So I guess we need to examine our root desires. Are they infected? Are our root desires reflective of Christ or are they driven at something else? I can tell you from recent experience that infected roots don’t stay hidden forever and eventually they may even ruin us.