The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Incisors lxxxiii-xcvii

Is there anything, said the Father of Teeth, more miraculously redolent of the Creator's intentions than a toothache? A nerve which was encased in pulp which was encased in enamel is disturbed, and the result is an agony which can be appeased only by a visit to that most terrifying and humiliating of tormentors, the dentist. So large and distracting an event from so small a cause, said the Father of Teeth, must certainly give us pause to reflect upon the Creator's attitude, which punishes the humblest and most harmless life with death and, in higher organisms, with the pain of death and, in the highest organisms of all, with the fear of death and with the fear of the pain of death. And indeed, said the Father of Teeth, why stop there? Might the implications of toothache not inspire us to further reflections upon the nature of the Creator Himself, whose design for the lives of His creations is so entirely bound up with pain? For the crime of enjoying certain flavours, for the atrocity of failing to brush regularly and rigorously, for the sin of possessing unlucky genes or simply for living too long - for all these the punishment is pain, infection, humiliation and inconvenience, and even the very best dentures are but an imperfect remedy. The answer, said the Father of Teeth, the answer is faith. We must have faith that the Creator is vulnerable to our small transgressions and petty sins; we must have faith that they may crack the Creator's enamel, penetrate His pulp and act upon His raw nerves just as His divine dental decay acts on ours. And the Father of Teeth grinned, showing gaps as black as the benevolent void.