I am a practicing civil litigator from Texas. I have also been been speaking, teaching, blogging, and reading about Christian spirituality in the emerging culture for over five years. Aside from my passion for all things Dallas Cowboys, my interests are of a decidedly geek-ish bent: they include technology, quantum physics, PC gaming, and board games.
Sheila and I co-teach a young adult bible class with Pam Rowley, one of the pastors at our church. Several weeks ago, the class decided to read through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity together, and tomorrow, we plan to wind things up with a summary of Lewis' closing thoughts. We're also going to read an excerpt from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, another Lewis masterpiece.
In preparing a summary of the closing chapters of the book, I've been struck by the way Lewis really does view sanctification (the transformation of humans from an evil/sinful condition to a right/good condition) as the essential process that defines Christianity. Ideas of justification (often, but not always, thought of as an event that causes us to instantly be viewed as right/good by God, even though we remain sinful) take a back seat to Lewis. In fact, if when I read the book closely, I think Lewis is arguing that the language of justification is just another way of talking about how we get into the process of sanctification.
For Lewis, sanctification is a voluntary process. God won't force it on us. And when we choose it, it is immensely painful. It involves the "killing"of one self so that another self can be embraced. We embrace this process with trepidation the same way we get anxious about going to the dentist – knowing that it is needed, but dreading the anxiety and pain it will cause.
The concept is beautifully illustrated in Dawn Treader, when a young boy named Eustace accidentally turns himself into a dragon after going to sleep on a pile of magical treasure. Knowing that he is still a boy underneath, he tries to remove the dragon skin, but discovers that the removal of one layer only reveals another one below it. His only option is to allow Aslan, the great Lion, to remove the skin for him.
Here is Eustace's account of the process:
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 and let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you've ever picked a scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
* * *
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I'd done it my self 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 smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.
For me, Lewis' genius is in the way he picks up on the subtleties of the process. Is it painful? Yes. Still, there is a certain kind of pleasure that comes from becoming free of this thing that has caused you pain and disfigured your soul – like yanking off a scab to find healed skin underneath. And what can you expect to find when the process is complete? After the fact, you'll probably discover you were a great deal worse off than even you imagined.
That is what is on my mind this Lenten Saturday: Dragon skin is ugly, and it hurts when you peel on it. But it is actually kind of fun letting Aslan take it off.
