Dragon Skin

Do you ever have Eustace Scrubb moments? Moments when you feel, like the character of the 'unfortunately named' Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, that you've layers and layers of accumulated dragon skin (made up of all sorts of sins and selfishness) that you long to peel away and can't?

I have moments like that sometimes. The other night I was feeling all "stuffed with self" -- full of impatience, uncharitable feelings, sharp tones -- and then feeling guilty because I knew that perhaps the worst part of all was how focused I was on my own sense of failure and self-pity. It was only after a time of prayer and confession that I felt stripped clean, made "real" again, reminded I was a beloved daughter, redeemed and whole.

I've always loved the scene in Dawn Treader and the marvelous transformation of dragon-Eustace back into human (but perhaps truly human for the first time) Eustace. But I have a deeper appreciation for the scene now, having read Alan Jacobs' beautiful reflections on it, woven skillfully into his reflections on C.S. Lewis' own gradual transformation as he moved from an atheistic materialism, to recognition that there was "a" God, to a final recongition of and surrender to the triune God. Lewis himself described part of that transformation (in Surprised by Joy) as the feeling that he was a lobster who had lost his hard shell. But somehow I never made the obvious connection between that description and the scene he wrote about Eustace.

Jacobs writes:

"It is especially noteworthy that Eustace's own attempts to remove his scaly skin are ineffectual. To peel off his skin is 'a most lovely feeling,' but he is just the same after doing so
-- just as Lewis himself had been exactly the same after 'breaking the neck' of a prideful thought, or several prideful thoughts. Eustace skins himself three times before realizing that his best efforts are inadequate. It is only Aslan who has the strength (and the love) to do the job properly -- that is, to turn Eustace back into a boy again -- and Eustace welcomes the gift, even if 'the very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.'

But then it is characteristic of Aslan, as Lord of Narnia, to do for his people what they cannot do for themselves. He heals, he saves -- he even dies for them when there is no other remedy. But it is not clear that when Lewis was discovering his 'depth under depth of self-love and self-admiration' he yet understood the deepest character of the God in whom he now believed. He was still trying to strip away his own skin, but every day, whether he knew it or not, he was moving closer to the recognition that it was not just any God but the God of Jesus Christ into whose hands he had fallen, and that if any radical change in him were ever to happen, his own powers of insight and determination would not be adequate to the task. Only the claws of that God could penetrate to his very heart."
(~~The Narnian, pp. 134-135)

Besides the insight this gave me into Lewis' transformation, it also gives me much to ponder about myself and about the Lord. What makes me most grateful is the realization that once we've been transformed by Jesus into our real human selves, we can't really ever go back to being dragons again. Like Eustace, we may still have dragonish moments (or even days!) when we lapse into old ways and sins and thought-habits, or when we listen to lies about who we are. In those times we may begin to feel the scaly skin trying to creep back. But we can turn to the Lord and ask him to peel it away again before it can thicken and grow. We can trust that he will, and that he will, when necessary, "velvet his paws" (to use another wonderful image from Lewis' Aslan). For the Lord is both strong and gentle, and in his grace he longs to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.