My favorite part of my yearly dentist visit was digging into a cardboard box of plastic toys after being told I had no cavities. The airplane or puzzle was my prize for brushing my teeth so well.

The office had a stale smell, Highlights magazines littered the tables, and the x-ray equipment was avocado green.

Twenty years and no cavities.

One day a friend was talking about her dentist visits as a kid: teeth cleaning, fluoride, lead vests with the x-rays. I didn’t have any of these. My dentist told me that fluoride was only for special cases and that I didn’t need to have my teeth cleaned every year. I asked my parents if I could go to a new dentist.

A few x-rays later, my new dentist broke the news to me. I had eight cavities—and some of them had been there five or six years. (I had just visited my regular dentist the year before.)

I tried to hold my tears back, but I began to cry in the room with the shiny instruments and smiley-faced lead vest. I felt betrayed by the dentist who was supposed to be taking care of my teeth.

A friend once described the church she grew up in as Chicken Soup for the Soul. Watered down, feel-good messages: Be nice to people and think about God sometimes, mostly on Sundays.

It wasn’t until I was in junior high and went to another church’s event and heard the truth of the gospel that I understood that knowing Bible stories and listening to my parents and trying to be nice and thinking about God every once in a while wouldn’t be enough to get me into heaven.

As a child, I was terrified of eternity. I imagined my soul like a California Raisin with white plastic arms and legs sticking out from the sides. Shriveled. Forever.

One night at a concert, I put my faith in Christ alone. But I continued to go to my broth-y church. I didn’t know people read the Bible, and nothing in my life changed.

In college I started going to a church that believed the Bible could influence your life every single moment. Thinking about the church I used to go to, I began to feel that same betrayal I felt with the dentist. The church that was supposed to be watching over my soul had given me a bit of truth, but not all of it.

Without the whole truth, there is nothing.