Eustace’s Un-Dragoning : Part 2 : Trying and failing

If you haven’t read the first part, you may do so here. As the passage continues, Eustace recounts his attempts to shed his dragon skin himself.

“And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden – trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.

“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells – like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under-skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.”

Eustace at once sees the pool and believes if only he could bathe in it, his pain would be relieved. But he cannot enter the pool at first, because Aslan knows he must first see that he can’t solve his problem on his own. So Eustace sheds his first skin and feels great. But when he sees his reflection in the water, he realizes that he’s not as good as he had thought. That’s alright, he thinks, I’ll simply try again. But again, he realizes it’s not good enough. That’s when he starts to despair, and tries a third time with the same result.

Many of our own stories are very similar. Perhaps, for example, we read in the Bible or hear in Church or simply know from our own conscience that we shouldn’t talk meanly to our siblings. So since we’re a pretty good person otherwise, we decide this is something that must be remedied. We decide that from now on, we will follow the rule of ‘If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ And perhaps we do alright for a short time, but quickly we forget and our tongue slips. ‘Well that was no good; I’ll certainly try harder this time,’ we say. Then we forget and are again back at square one.
Sometimes, as Eustace did, we may have successes out of our own efforts and feel quite good about ourselves. And then we remind ourselves how really we don't have near as many faults as, or have less ugly faults than, most people and we feel even better. This is why this 'trying and failing' step is so important.

First we must realize the reality of our problem. Numerous Bible verses tell us that we "all fall short" (Romans 3:23). God demands perfection for entry into heaven, and this is something that we cannot attain on our own.

Yet we must try. We may look at Lewis’ words in Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 12.

“Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest and then failing. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home.”

After failing enough times we can see that we are really not getting much of anywhere and our situation is utterly hopeless. We realize that we cannot fix it on our own; either someone much better than us must help, or we are lost.
This, of course, is something we’re constantly learning, are constantly being humbled by, but the despair of this realization can be transformed into hope when it leads to surrender to the one who can ‘un-dragon’ us if we let him.

Now read Part 3 to read how Eustace is undragoned, and how we may be too!