“it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt…”

In C.S. Lewis’ book Voyage of the Dawn Treader a young boy named Eustace becomes an ugly scaly dragon as a consequence for being selfish and stubborn.  He realizes his mistake and desperately wants to become a boy again, so he tries and tries to tear into and rip off his dragon skin.  There’s just one problem, he can’t get his dragon skin off no matter how hard he tries.  The deeper he tries to go into the dragon scales, the more pain he feels.  After a while, Aslan comes to his aid and leads him to a well to bathe in.  But since he’s a dragon he cannot enter the well, the skin must come off first.  Eustace tries again to painfully tear through the layers of dragon skin but again becomes aware that he cannot do it on his own.  Aslan says, “You’ll have to let me undress you.”  Eustace describes the event:

I was so 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…he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done 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 knobbly looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft…then he caught hold of me…and threw me into the water…I’d turned into a boy again…After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me…with his paws…in these new clothes I’m wearing.  (The Emotionally Healthy Church, pg 73-74)

I love this story because it portrays a massive reality: sanctification into the image of Christ.  Just as Eustace felt the horribly painful claws of Aslan tearing into him, so too when Christ conforms us into His image, His pruning is often just as painful.  John 151-2, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” The pruning of Christ can be very painful, but O’ is it good to be more like Jesus and less like the world!  I could even call this pruning, a “pleasing pain”!

James 5:13b and C.S. Lewis

James 5:13b says “Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises.” When I read this, I ask one question, why?  C.S. Lewis has a great answer:

But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me.  I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor.  I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game…My whole, more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.  I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, page 94-95)