A True Beast

There’s an interesting scene in The Horse and His Boy from the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.  The horse Bree was discussing with a couple others how Aslan couldn’t be a real lion: “No doubt, when they speak of him as a Lion they only mean he’s as strong as a lion….  Or something of that kind….  It would be quite absurd to suppose he is a real lion.  Indeed it would be disrespectful.  If he was a lion he’d have to be a Beast just like the rest of us.”  At that point in the story Aslan showed up and touched Bree, and said, “Touch me.  Smell me.  Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers.  I am a true beast” (pg. 200-201).  This little encounter of course reminds us of the experience of Thomas who couldn’t believe that Christ was really resurrected.  The Savior came to him saying, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing” (John 20:27).  Probably the main take away from this scripture is the need to have faith and trust in the Savior.  But if I can assume that Aslan was a symbol of Christ in this story about his visitation to the horse, then I think the lesson is a little different.  What I see the story teaching is that Christ is “a true man”, meaning that He really became as one of us.  Just as Bree couldn’t fathom that his mythical figure who had saved Narnia was actually an animal like himself, so too is it hard for some to imagine that Christ was a man like us.  But that’s exactly what the scriptures want us to see about the Savior.  

                It doesn’t take long for us to see this principle taught about God that we are very much like Him.  In the first chapter of the Old Testament we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:26-27).  Obviously as well the whole of the four gospels is a continuous witness to the fact that the Savior came to earth as a man and is like us.  Paul emphasized this to the Hebrews, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).  In other words, Christ lived and suffered through the mortal experience just as we did and faced the temptations that we do.  Alma taught something similar when he said, “The Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people” (Alma 7:13).  The Savior had to live in the “flesh” like us in order to be able to atone for our sins and to succor us.  He had to go through the same process as us in gaining a body and experiencing mortality, and then as He showed over and over again after His resurrection, the body is something that is kept and is a part of us forever.  We get another view of how Christ is like us in the vision of Enoch: He saw that “the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept” (Moses 7:28).  There are few things that make us more “human” than the ability to cry and express our emotions, and here we see a God who does the same.  So what do we do with that knowledge that Christ was and is in many ways one of us?  As Paul taught, that knowledge should motivate us to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy” (Hebrews 4:16).