If you want a career where you get to play with the very best creation has to offer in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, sculpture, engineering, computing, psychology, art, business, leadership, law, and of course, surgery, then dentistry is the job for you!
Far from being, as it is sometimes seen, medicine’s poor cousin, we get to enjoy a much wider scope of practice than most of our medical colleagues could dream of. We are given the rare privilege of forming long-term relationships with our patients, their children and their children’s children. We get opportunities to know more than just their dentition, but also their challenges, hopes and fears. One timely word about oral hygiene can improve the life quality of generations of people and one carefully delivered treatment which didn’t hurt quite as much as someone thought it might, can release them from the captivity of fear.
Of course there are challenges, not least in a struggling health service, but if meeting people in their most vulnerable state, bringing healing and restoration to a mouth marred by the consequences of wrong doing sounds familiar, and you fancy getting paid for privilege then what could be a better way for a Christian to emulate Jesus in the 21st Century?
Working for the wellbeing of creation
I hate the dentist! That is going to be the phrase that defines your life, both when you are at work and when you are at play. And we know why. Nobody likes going to the dentist, the best we can hope for is “I don’t mind too much” or “I like my dentist but don’t like the dentistry”.
So good dentists learn to accept and embrace our role. We know that people need to hear our messages, even when they don’t want to. We know that we will be ignored, maligned and blamed for things we never did. But then that was the life experience of almost every Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist and even Jesus himself.
And when we remember the Father’s unfailing love and inexhaustible capacity for forgiveness we start over with each new patient and lead them gently down a path they don’t want to follow.
Whether you choose hospital, practice or community dentistry in the UK or abroad, or as many of us do, a mix up of many different branches of dentistry, you will spend your working days doing some of the most hands-on restorative healing work imaginable. Uncovering the problems people didn’t even know they had, accepting them without judgement, and helping them step by step back towards health.
And for many dentists that role won’t be limited to their patients, but also their staff. For those of us who run practices, we will be a very significant influence in the lives of the people, and the families of the people, we employ and work alongside.
As a Christian dental student you may have been drawn to study dentistry with a sense of calling. This calling may take you into many different dental environments, both in the UK and overseas. This calling is where your passion merges with where God is at work or has an unfulfilled or unmet need. Dentistry is a wonderful opportunity to co-work with our heavenly Creator, making a practical difference in the world and impacting culture for the best, whether that is through relieving the pain of tooth ache for an individual or affecting dental public policy and provision locally, nationally or internationally. Your dental course will inspire and equip you to take those first steps along a lifetime career of dentistry in the service of patients and our Father.
But accepting this challenge is not easy. For many dentists, constantly being “the bad guy” chips away bit by bit at our once noble intentions and we find ourselves becoming cynical and callous. It’s in those circumstances that the people who carry the mark of Christ can make the biggest difference. When we are at our weakest and the world is at its darkest, His strength sustains us and His light shines brightest.
The Christian Dental Fellowship was formed so that, collectively, Christian dentists and dental students could support, equip and encourage one another, as we seek to be a positive Christian influence in the profession.
So is dentistry a good way to bring the message of forgiveness, restoration and hope to a fallen world? Absolutely. Will your patients, love every word you say and every action you take? Maybe not so much.
Do you want a career that has a minute-by-minute, day-by-day positive impact on the world? Take up your drill and follow Him.
Worshipping the God we work for
So far, we’ve thought about what we as dentists do for the world around us, and we do a lot. But what about the effects of being a dentist on us and specifically on us as Christians?
In simple terms, dentistry and discipleship are perfect bedfellows, for they are both lifelong learning disciplines.
To start with, we get a full five years to dedicate our lives to the study of the pinnacle of God’s creation. Delving deeper and deeper into the detail of what seems at first sight to be a simple structure reveals layer after layer of complexity and beauty that came into being through our Father’s command and our Saviour's making. Then, just when we think we know it all, yet another new layer is revealed.
Each time we find out something new that God did or does, it allows us to worship a little more deeply, a little more fully, and with a little more awe. Far from the study of science removing the role of God in the world, it enhances our respect for Him and deepens our understanding of what He’s done. And the best bit? We know that there is more to come. Every answered question in science opens a hundred more we’ve never even thought of, but He has.
He was there before us, He knew the answer before we even knew there was a question to ask. And He is still there, hanging out down the barrel of a microscope eyepiece or in the curve of a graph, just waiting to be discovered.
But dentistry is so much more than scientific learning, great though that is. We are also allowed to play an active part in healing. Our professional lives are a mirror for what Jesus did for us.
The biggest single branch of dentistry is named “restorative dentistry”; the clue is in the name. Restoring creation to as close as possible to its former glory, taking the form and function or blueprint of the Creator as our inspiration. Hence, undoing the effects of a fallen world, not in some vague, overarching, impersonal sense, but intimately for a single individual, millimetre by millimetre at a time, made with our own two hands, enhanced and enabled by the God-given gifts we are endowed with and learn to use. Every filling, every extraction, every procedure, is a one-off act of healing, built for a recipient of one – the patient – and seen only by an audience of one – Our Father.
So, as dentists, we get intellectual stimulation and emotional appreciation of what God has done, and we get to act out 30 times a day, small miracles of resurrection.
Witnessing to the world
Yet we do all of this in a broken and fallen world. We work in systems that are underfunded, stretched and inadequate. We live under the constant threat of complaint and litigation, of pressure and competition and in an environment where stick has become dominant over carrot.
Supporting our colleagues who give their all, but find it’s never enough, is part of our role too.
We all fail and need forgiveness, but when we have a professional culture where blame walks tall and shouts her accusations loudly, Christian voices of love, kindness and gentleness are needed all the more. This is one way we can mould the culture of our working environments, witnessing to the loving support and acceptance of Jesus as we come alongside our colleagues and peers, journeying with them.
The pressures of the business of dentistry, be that private or NHS, practice, hospital or community, place us on a direct collision course with the principles of health care: “I want to give my all to this patient, but I have a hundred more waiting”; “I want to spend my life in the service of others but if my business doesn’t make profit, I can’t help anyone”.
So we need to be grown-ups in our faith as we wrestle with these dilemmas and grapple with the ethics of such complexities, leaning on the Word and counsel of Christ.
Somehow our role is to mirror Jesus in the way He pursued his big picture mission relentlessly and without swerving, while in the same moment finding time for the individual who presents needing help.
Your fellow students, your colleagues and your professional peers will all see the way you do that. Like all professions, dentistry is a small world, and reputations take a long time to build and moments to destroy. Living a life in the mouths of others isn’t easy, but if you do, you won’t always need yours to bear witness for Him.
Your fingers, your appointment book, and your attitudes and actions will do that for you.
So what to do?
Are you thinking about applying to university and embarking on this career? Are you at university and wondering if the hours in the library and the phantom head room are worth it?
Yes, yes and yes!
Dentistry is a wonderful career.
Minute by minute we reenact inside our patients’ mouths what Jesus did for us on the cross.
Month by month we mimic what the Father did in the process of creation.
And year by year we get paid to display the work of the Spirit as we bear His fruit.
Reflect and discuss
Think: Think back over what you have studied so far in your degree. Where have you seen God's fingerprints? Where have ideas presented to you challenged what you believed to be true?
Live: What do you think your coursemates would know about what is important to you from the way you live? Is there anything you want to change here?
Speak: Are there topics in your subject that are closer to talking about your outlook on life, God or the gospel? Pray for people on your course and for opportunities to share about Jesus with them this term.
