The Scales We Cannot Shed Ourselves

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the boy Eustace Scrubb is selfish, greedy, and thoroughly unpleasant. One night on a dragon's island, he falls asleep on a pile of treasure, and wakes to discover he has become a dragon himself. His outward form has finally matched his inward condition. Eustace tries desperately to scratch off the scales. He peels away one layer, then another, then another — but each time, a new layer of dragon skin lies underneath. He cannot fix what he has become.

Then Aslan appears. The great lion tells Eustace, "You will have to let me undress you." Aslan's claws cut deeper than Eustace ever dared go himself. It hurts terribly. But when the lion is finished, Eustace is a boy again — tender-skinned, vulnerable, and finally free.

Lewis understood something every pastor knows: we cannot redeem ourselves. We try. We shed one bad habit only to find another beneath it. We rearrange the surface while the deeper condition remains. True redemption requires a hand stronger and more loving than our own — a hand willing to cut deep enough to reach what is buried underneath all our striving.

The Almighty does not ask us to make ourselves presentable first. He asks only that we stand still and let Him do what we never could.