Quest

 

Here is a synopsis of one of the best parts of any C.S. Lewis book, pieced together from commentaries by Jake Rainwater and Jennifer Neyhart:

The scene involves Eustace, a nasty little boy whom everyone hates. Eustace is selfish, mean, quick-tempered, and positively horrific in his treatment of other people. Despite this, Eustace finds himself on a ship in the magical land of Narnia. While on this adventure, the crew of the Dawn Treader dock on an island, and Eustace wanders into a cave filled with treasure.

What Eustace does not realize is that the treasure is actually the hoard of a dragon. He puts on a gold bracelet and falls asleep on the treasure, and when he wakes up, he finds himself transformed into a horrific dragon. Lewis writes, "Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself." 

Immediately the gravity of the situation is made evident to him. He cannot go back to the ship. He will be left on the island all by himself to live out his days as a terrible monster with a treasure that is utterly useless.

That night the great king of Narnia, Aslan the Lion, appears (as Aslan is apt to do) and leads Eustace to a large well "like a very big round bath with marble steps going down into it." Eustace describes the scene to Edmund after the fact. He says the water was so clear and he thought if he could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in his leg (from the gold bracelet he had put on when he was human). But Aslan told him he had to undress first. And doesn't God ask this of us? As Lewis wrote in Letters to Malcolm: "We must lay before him [God] what is in us; not what ought to be in us.”

Eustace realizes that Aslan means for him to shed his dragon skin, and begins to scratch off the scales. To his horror, he realizes that there is nothing but more dragon skin underneath. Aslan eventually tells the boy that he must be allowed to dig even deeper. Eustace later recounts to the crew what exactly happened:

I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now… The very first tear he made was so deep that I though it had gone right 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 knobby-looking than the others had been… Then he caught hold of me…and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment…Then I saw…I’d been turned into a boy again.

Now for my words, but first an admonition.

Set these three important truths in your amulet, for war demands triumph:

1. Dragons exist. Life is meant to be a test of choosing the right when confronted with opposition; dragons are often the opposition.
2. Satan, as the father of lies and embodiment of hopelessness, would have you believe dragons can’t be beaten. He also prefers to enslave old creatures.
3. Jesus Christ volunteered to slay every iteration of dragon when He offered to be our Savior. He actually slayed every dragon millenia later in Gethsemane.

Oh, the dragons I have fought. I have fought an empty nursery, a bad back, and to stay in business. These outer dragons—dragons I attacked safely behind the chain mail of stratagems—were a nuisance but an easy target. "Kill the dragon!" I shouted, as I charged with sharpened sword.

What to do, however, with an inner dragon? With a monster who paces back and forth inside your mind spitting fireballs until you are rendered an unrecognizable shadow burnt full of holes? That person hasn’t the strength to charge, much less hold a sword. This is why inner dragons are much, much harder to kill.

Like Eustace, all it takes to change the world as you know it is the accidental accessorizing of a gold band. The style of bauble varies but they all feel like failure: sin, addiction, botched personal relationships, comparison, betrayal, loss. One morning you wake up altered. You hope it’s a bad dream but you sense the cave-in, the collapse of your status quo, and just like that you’re an isolated dragon.

You tear yourself to shreds to start anew, clawing at callous layers with an increase of spirit-strengthening activities, but the devil can do marvelous things with flaps of partially-molted mistakes and still-attached regrets. After all, he is an old serpent with no family and craves scaly company. He tells you day in and day out this is all your fault, it’s how things will stay, there is no way out. His dark coaching is slow strangulation; it brings you to new lows.

From your prison you repeatedly muster brave attempts to raise what has been toppled—to make restitution—but the rubble remains. You remember having worth, but you’re beginning to believe you’ll forever be a dragon, so you exhale a blaze and limp to your burned lair of self-loathing. All this time chevaliers and comforters are trying to talk sense into you—they’re fighting for you—but hearing when detached is hard and feeling through scar tissue is harder.

This—posing as fleshy and fine while a dragon secretly sabotages you to the core—can last for years.

Until one Sunday after church, while watching Music and the Spoken Word, beast ears twitch as the choir starts to sing “It Is Well With My Soul”. Groans echo emptiness from a sad underbelly. Sparkly dragon tears drip sideways.

Father! It is not well with my soul. I feel like it will never be well. Is this silent savage permanent? Will I ever be free? What have I not tried? What lack I yet? Please, I believe the Atonement of Thy Son covers this. Show me what Thou would have me do. Fix me.

There is a swell of hope as chariots and angels lift from a tired nest; rotten scales fall to the ground as tethers snap. A vision sequencing specific, detailed actions is seen and once they are performed with exactness there is a deafening crack: the merits, mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah unfurl with a thunderclap and suffocated horizons broaden. The sonic boom of God’s love signals the end of pain, the shedding of skin, the death of a dragon.

It was real, and I am smooth again. I was in bondage to sorrow, and I am free. In fact, I don't have a single scaly pang of memory left from the ordeal.

C.S. Lewis said, “Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are not making their destiny brighter but darker.”

No one is a braver hero than the Savior. He is gallant. He is Faithful and True. He is the Advocate for all dragon-fighters and the brightest way to victory. In the trickiest of transformations—the wrestle against oneself—turn to Him. Only Christ can enable each individual to conquer their most complex quest: the killing of one's old creature without the wounding of one's new.

Dragons can be beaten!

Dual-photo quote by Neil Gaiman, paraphrasing G. K. Chesterton

Top photo taken from the book “The Magic Grinder” (1975), a book my mom used to read to me when I was little. She belonged to Disney’s Wonderful World of Reading club and we got books every month in the mail. Little by little I’ve recreated my well-loved childhood library via ebay.

Bottom photo of the first set of rubber stamps I ever bought, also from ebay: “Dreams & Dragons” by Stampin’ Up! I love this set! One of the stamps says, “May your dreams come true and your dragons be few”. My dragons haven’t been few but I don’t think I’d have my dreams without them (or ebay).

The full passage from C.S. Lewis, in case you like to read beautiful things.

Merits, mercy, and grace scripture: 2 Nephi 2:8