Only He Can Undragon Us

(This post is part of a series of posts about The Chronicles of Narnia.)

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie magically end up back in Narnia, on Prince Caspian's ship, the Dawn Treader, exploring the oceans eastward, along with their cousin Eustace. Only Eustace, a miserable person anyway, hates everything and constantly complains. He makes life unpleasant for everyone around him.

When the Dawn Treader survives a storm and takes shelter in an unknown island for repairs, Eustace sneaks off. He ends up finding a pile of treasure. Since he has never read adventure stories, it does not occur to him that this is a dragon's treasure. But that is what it is. This dragon, however, is very old, and it dies in Eustace's presence. In relief, thinking greedy thoughts about the treasure, Eustace falls asleep, after putting on a gold armband. But when he awakens, he has become a dragon himself, with a now very tight armband causing him great pain in his leg.

Many things happen after the band of Narnians realize that this dragon is Eustace and puzzle about how they might take him with them when they have to leave. But eventually one night, Edmund awakens to find Eustace a boy again. Eustace describes to him how a lion (he does not know that this is Aslan, the Christ figure of the stories) had come to him and led him to a well on top of a mountain. Eustace says that he was happy about this, because he wanted to bathe his sore leg in the well. But the lion, Aslan, says that Eustace must first undress. Eustace continues the story.

"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 most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

"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 all 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 under skin 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 at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

"Then the lion said—but 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 down into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.... 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 knobbly looking than the others had been. And there I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious...."

Eustace had been a dragon but wanted to become a person again. But he couldn't do it himself. Only Aslan could do it for him. What a great illustration Lewis has written of what it is like for us! We are all lost in sin. We want to become better people. We try to be better people. But we can't do it. No matter how hard we try, we always end up slipping up again. We cannot make ourselves better—not truly, completely better. Christ has to do it for us. It hurts, but it feels so good to get rid of the sin and the nastiness that we've had in our lives. And after that it becomes perfectly delicious.

As Paul wrote in Romans 7:15-16b,21-25b, "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.... So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"