Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come! The old is gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis, contains one of the clearest pictures of grace and spiritual transformation ever written for ordinary people. When God opened doors and called me to preach and pastor, it was one of the first stories I wanted to share, and have done so repeatedly over the years. Eustance Clarence Scrubb is an insufferable, bullying boy when he stumbles onto a dragon’s lair while trying to avoid work. There he discovers great treasure and falls asleep on it, dreaming greedy dreams and plans. When he awakens, he finds he has become a dragon himself. He is helpless to do anything about it. If he is ever to become “undragoned,” someone else will have to do it. Eustace’s story answers the question of what happens when a selfish, defensive, greedy person is dragonized, but one day wishes to be truly human again. His story is our story individually and in community too.
Eustace becomes a greedy dragon outwardly because inwardly he already was one. His dragon form simply revealed who he truly was. Eustance was arrogant, entitled, isolated, critical, obsessed with self-comfort, greedy, and unable and to love well, and unwilling to even try. The
dragon form simply revealed externally what was already shaping him internally.
This part of Eustance’s story tells us that sin is not just breaking God’s rules. God doesn’t want us to sin because it slowly deforms the human soul. You have seen it happen. So have I, even if we didn’t understand what was at work. That’s why people have said for centuries, “the way you live eventually tells on your face.”
The good news is that the opposite result is also true. Mercy and grace from God, then choosing love, humility, courage, surrender, and extending grace ourselves reshapes us into a new person – someone truly alive. We become different people.
Following Jesus is not rule-keeping. Transformation is not God making people robotic, less-human creations. The undragoning God does for us restores us to true humanity, to who we were meant to be. Mercy finds us in our dragon skin, and grace restores us and helps us become our best, most beautiful selves.
Can you imagine a community of undragoned people?
- God created us in His very own image, but sin has covered us in dragon skin. By His mercy and grace He has saved us and can undragon us in every way, if we work with Him. Ask Him where He sees that you need undragoned, then agree.