The Dragon Skin

I just finished reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, book 5 of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.  One of the characters is a boy named Eustace, a cousin to Lucy and Edmund.  At the beginning of the book he was quite the self-absorbed, unlikable know-it-all (and who, it would appear from the first page, was what C.S. Lewis envisioned a Mormon to be, for his parents were “non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes”).  After he, Edmund, and Lucy got transported to Narnia and the ship the Dawn Treader he was miserable and terribly bad-tempered for the first part of their voyage.  Eventually they made it to an island, he wandered off, and after sleeping in the cave of a dead dragon he got turned into one.  He spent several days as a dragon and had no way of turning himself back into a boy, and the group began to worry what they would do with him.  Then one night Aslan visited him, bade him follow, and took him to a pool of water.  Aslan told Eustace the dragon to “undress” and then bathe.  So Eustace peeled a layer of skin off, but he found that he still had more dragon skin under that.  He continued doing that, but then ultimately realized it was no use; he could get all the dragon skin off.  Aslan then said, “You will have to let me undress you” and Eustace lied down.  He described what followed this way: “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt” (pgs. 108-109).  Aslan eventually got all of his dragon skin off and Eustace bathed and became a boy again.  After this Eustace was significantly changed and had a whole different attitude for the rest of the journey. 

                I’ve been thinking a lot about this little episode and I love the symbolism that I see in it.  We simply can’t overcome our weaknesses and sins and challenges without the help of the Savior.  We may try to make some small improvements to our outside appearance to address what we see as our flaws, but we’ll never get at the core of the matter without the Savior.  He wants to change our very nature, and, as it was for Eustace, that can be very painful.  To be a disciple of Christ we must become a “new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15, Mosiah 27:26).  We must “put off the old man with his deeds” and be “born again” through the Savior (Colossians 3:9, John 3:5).  Our “old man” must be “crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Romans 6:6).  Unlike for Paul and Alma the Younger, though, our experience will likely be more gradual, and just when we feel like we have removed all of the layers ourselves, we find that we didn’t really get it up.  It’s only through the atonement of Christ that we can be truly cleansed and changed.  It reminds me of the story of the man who had suffered for 38 years by the pool of Bethesda and could not do what was necessary by himself to be healed.  The Lord came to him and said, “With thou be made whole?” (John 5:6)  It’s as if the Savior said to the man, “Has it been long enough?  Will you finally be made whole through me?”  He was then healed, but it was only by accepting the Savior’s help.  If we really want to overcome our sins and weaknesses we must come unto Him; then His grace will be “sufficient” to turn our weaknesses into strengths (Ether 12:27).  But, as Eustace experienced, it will hurt.