By Tim Sanders

I had originally planned to write an informative column about how to interpret the cryptic instructions in a camcorder operating guide which begins with a section called "Enjoying with your DVD Handycam," and makes even less sense as you turn the pages. That was my plan, but since every time I looked at that operating guide I began to twitch, I decided against it. You can’t write a column if you aren’t ... you know ... enjoying with it.

Fortunately, my crack research staff (which has researched cracks in the Earth’s crust, cracks in drywall, and even the crack in the Liberty Bell) ran across an article in last week’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune which concerned, among other things, cracked teeth. Written by Christopher O’Donnell, it deals with a subject which the dentally-impaired everywhere should take seriously. Here are portions of that article:

Dental Healer finds share of faithful believers

PARRISH – A flashlight in one hand, a small mirror in the other, the Rev. Steve Jones shines a light into the wide-open mouth of Parrish resident Don Sturiano.
In the glare, the amalgam fillings in Sturiano’s back teeth sparkle.

Earlier, Jones had laid his hands on the man’s mouth and prayed for his teeth.

"You can see gold coming in it," Jones exclaimed to the crowd inside the revival tent. "They weren’t that color when I first came in."

The 50-year-old West Virginia evangelist, who describes himself as "an interdenominational Christian," will pray for the sick and lame, but it’s cracked molars, crooked teeth, toothaches and amalgam fillings that he believes are his calling.

Since he began praying for teeth in 1987, the former coal miner and amateur boxer says he has seen crooked teeth straighten in slow motion, cracked teeth heal, and blackened amalgam fillings turn to silver and gold.

The article goes on to describe the dream that led Jones to become an orthodontic faith-healer, and even offers evidence that the Almighty is not above using a little divine novocaine when necessary.

Sturiano, the Parrish resident, was sure something had taken place in his mouth.
"I came expecting it to happen," he said. "When he prayed for me, I felt the right side of my face go numb."

And according to O’Donnell, Rev. Jones is not the only faith healing dental practitioner with a golden touch.

Jones’ claims have led to him being dubbed the "spiritual tooth fairy" and "God’s dental assistant." But he’s not the only evangelist tending to followers’ teeth and claiming alchemistic results.

Known as the "gold fillings" phenomenon, worshippers across North America, Asia and the United Kingdom have reported that precious metals–some in the shape of the cross–have appeared in their teeth after visiting healers.

I find all of this very encouraging. It wasn’t so long ago that faith healers were all general practitioners. Nobody specialized in anything. Regardless of whether you had a broken leg or a collapsed lung or were blind as a mole, you went to the same faith healer who, like the old country doctor, did the best he could with what he had. Not surprisingly, there were hundreds of thousands of people who received only partially effective miracle healings.

I have in my files a 1999 Newsweek article which tells the pathetic story of Earl Nesbit of Vancouver, who suffered from an inner ear condition which caused him to fall, often without warning. In 1998 he’d attended a faith healing meeting in Toronto. The faith healer, who as it turned out had experienced a lot of success with lower back problems and poor posture, had not really been "called" to treat auditory complaints. He did the best he could with Mr. Nesbit, and pronounced him healed when he picked him up from the floor. Nesbit would later tell the Newsweek reporter that he’d been so impressed with his newfound "excellent posture" that he forgot all about his inner ear problems. That is, he forgot until a week after his miracle healing, when he "stood up straight and tall to wave at some friends" while riding the Wild Mouse at Vancouver’s Playland Amusement Park. "My head started to swim, I became dizzy, and lurched sideways, over the car and down into the horrified crowd below." The faith healer was not an ear, nose and throat specialist, only a general practitioner with some rudimentary skills in chiropractic medicine. We can only imagine the irreversible damage he may have done to people with impacted wisdom teeth, or worse, end-stage periodontal disease.

I am confident that other faith healers will follow Rev. Jones’ example and answer the call to specialize. Soon the landscape will be dotted with head-slapping faith healers plying their trade, in specialties ranging from orthodontics to orthopedics to prosthetics. Well, maybe not prosthetics. The point is, it’s an idea whose time has come.

And when I find a faith healer who specializes in casting demons out of 146-page Handycam Operating Guides, making the instructions all healthy and readable the way God intended them to be, I’ll be right there on stage with my afflicted little booklet in hand. Even if he has to slap it half a dozen times to make sense out of the thing, it’ll be a miracle worth waiting for.