All that Glistens isn’t Gold

I have hesitated in writing this blog entry, and for that I apologise; I realise I was concerned about offending, but I feel that I would be doing a disservice to you if I didn’t bring this up..

Todd Bentley has come to the UK and has set up shop. For those who don’t know, he is an American preacher, who among other things, claims to have meet with an Angel called Emma, and to have spoken with St Paul. I am not going to specifically address his teaching as many have already done to. With his work in the UK has come again the claim that people have received gold teeth from God. This has made the front page of some local newspapers, and so it is this area I want to talk about.

I am a Charismatic Christian; by this I mean that I believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world today, and miracles happen today, and did not come to an end with the close of the New Testament.

I am also a sceptic. In my younger years I was involved in a wide variety of religions, and was a palm reader. I am also an illusionist. This combination has made me acutely aware of the way in which people can be made to believe something that is not true.

We are all susceptible to deception, to the influences of a good sales patter at our local retail store, to a convincing sob story from a con man. When we are told that God is doing something incredible we desperately want to believe it, to be a part of it, and so when people hear that God is giving people gold fillings, some suspend disbelief. To doubt seems to be showing a lack of faith, and so sometimes we don’t always ask the questions we should.

So, what is my problem with God providing people with gold fillings? My first difficulty lays in my knowledge of my own mouth. I have no idea how many fillings I have got. I have had a fair few, but couldn’t tell which teeth they are on, and I haven’t spent any time at all staring at my fillings.

This means that if someone told me tomorrow that God had given me a filling I would have difficulty in knowing whether this was the case, or whether it was a pre-existing filling. The next difficult I have is that most torches use bulbs that have a yellow light. If I was to shine one into my mouth, a silver coloured filling could easily look gold. If, however, knowing I have a number of fillings, I was to shine a torch into my mouth and find that I had no fillings at all, and my teeth were in perfect health, this would be astounding.

As I look at the biblical accounts of healings I find, for example, Jesus healing a lame man, or a blind man – in each case of a healing I find that God has repaired the body.

I can not find an example of God healing someone by providing a prosthetic limb. I find it hard to believe that the blind man was given metal eyes. For me it just wouldn’t make sense. If God, in designing humans, felt that we should have gold teeth, surely we would have been created with them? If, then, God heals someone who needs a filling, surely that healing would take the form of the cavity being replaced by the type of teeth we were designed with, not with a gold implant? If we were asked to believe that someone had been healed by being given a metal, or, for that matter, a wooden arm, we would struggle to see this as a miracle carried out by God, so why are people so ready to believe that God is providing people with fillings, gold or otherwise?

For me, the focus on such things removes our focus from God. I believe the most incredible, miraculous, mind blowing thing is that we have a God who loves us, that we are created beings and that we are invited to enter into a relationship with God. I find it amazing that, through Jesus, we can approach God. That is mind blowing. Gold teeth? Sorry, it just doesn’t get me excited.