The Dragon Who Couldn't Shed His Own Skin

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the selfish boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and wakes to discover he has become a dragon himself. His greed has, quite literally, consumed him. Desperate to return to his human form, Eustace tries to scratch off the dragon skin. He peels away one layer, then another, then another — but beneath each scaly hide lies yet another. He cannot go deep enough. The transformation he needs is beyond his own clawing.

Then Aslan comes. "You will have to let me undress you," the great lion says. And his claws cut far deeper than Eustace ever dared go himself. It hurts terribly. But when it is finished, Aslan throws the boy into clear water, and Eustace emerges with new, tender, human skin.

Lewis understood what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here." We spend years trying to peel off our own scales — our habits, our selfishness, our carefully constructed defenses. We make progress on the surface, but the deeper layers remain. Real transformation requires a hand stronger and more loving than our own.

The good news is this: the same God who asks to do that deeper work is gentle enough to carry us through it and faithful enough to make us new.