Putting Off Our Dragon Skins

One of my favorite parts of the Chronicles of Narnia is the story of Eustace on Dragon Island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. As I have written before, Eustace was a grumpy know-it-all who was very hard to get along with during the first part of their voyage. In chapter six of the book while on this island he wandered off, encountered a dead dragon and sought to take its treasure, and fell asleep only to awake to find himself a dragon. He stayed this way for several days, eventually communicating to his group what he had become. One night a lion appeared to him (Aslan) and bid him follow to a large well. He wanted to get in and bathe, but the lion told him he must “undress” first. He recounted in chapter seven, “I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a mostly lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.”

               But the dragon skin wasn’t really off. He continued, “But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe. Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked myself in the water I knew it had been no good.” Sometimes this is how I feel—I work to get rid of my own sins and weaknesses and think that I have successfully removed a layer of my own symbolic dragon skin. But then soon thereafter I realize that it has not really gone at all and that I’m still struggling with the same sins. Try as I might, the dragon skin seems to remain despite my best efforts to remove it as I try to rid myself of my evil nature.

               It was only the lion—the Christ symbol—who could remove the dragon skin off of Eustace. He continued, “Then the lion said—I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. 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. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off…. Well he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was, lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobby-looking than the others has been.” At that point Eustace realized that he was a boy again—the dragon had been completely transformed back into himself through the efforts of the lion. I have thought often of this story as I consider my own failed attempts to measurably improve myself and get rid of the dragon-like qualities that “so easily beset me.” The message of this story is that we have to turn to Christ and let him help us “put off the natural man” and become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” Only through His grace can we become “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).

               So how is this done? Surely, like Eustace, we must make the attempt ourselves to start. But then, as we try to change and come up short, we must turn to Him in earnest prayer for His power to help us. This is what Nephi did when he was “encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which [did] so easily beset [him].” He cried unto the Lord and turned his heart to Him: “O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake at the appearance of sin?” He pled with the Lord for help in overcoming his own wickedness: “O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me, that I may walk in the path of the low valley, that I may be strict in the plain road! O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies!” He committed himself to turning to the Lord in pray in all his days: “Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold, my voice shall forever ascend up unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God.” Surely as we try our best to overcome sin, and then we turn continually to God in prayer with the same intensity as Nephi did, we will find His strength to remove the dragon skin completely and keep it off for good.