Thoughts from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

A week or so ago I started rereading The Chronicles of Narnia--I tend to do this every couple of years. I finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader last night at 4:00 a.m. (I usually wake up at about this time and can't get back to sleep, so this time I decided to do something useful if I wasn't going to get any rest). This is one of my favorite books in the series because of Eustace's repentance story. (Warning--I am not even going to try to avoid spoiling the plot, so beware if you don't want me to give something away.) Eustace is the Pevensies' cousin, and at the beginning of the book he is a pretty rotten kid. He and Lucy and Edmund are brought into Narnia and join Prince Caspian on the ship The Dawn Treader in Caspian's quest to find the seven lords his uncle sent away and to possibly reach the end of the world. After a horrible storm, the Dawn Treader is in pretty bad shape, and the crew finds a fairly empty island where they stop to rest, repair the ship, and stock up on supplies. Eustace sneaks away from the group so that he can get out of helping with the work, and he gets lost and decides to rest in a dragon's cave. After falling asleep, he wakes up to discover that, "sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself." (97)

There are several things we can learn about repentance from what follows in Eustace's story. One thing I noticed is how much Eustace suffers when becoming a dragon forces him to realize how dragon-like he already was before this even happened. He realizes that he has hurt people as a result of his selfishness, pride, and unkindness, and that makes him feel really bad. I also sensed that he he has very little hope because he has no way of changing himself back into a boy, and being a dragon puts limits on what he can do to make up for his previous grievances. I think sometimes we feel that way when we realize that we have sinned or consider some weakness in our nature that is going to be hard to change. The fact is, sin eventually makes us suffer. It also takes away our freedom. Those who suffer the effects of drugs or breaking the law of chastity can attest to this because the consequences of their bad choices can have enormous effects on their lives and their ability to choose what they want to do with themselves.

The good news is that there is hope for forgiveness when we sin, and that hope can come by asking for the cleansing and healing that we can receive through Christ. We cannot be forgiven by ourselves--there is a lot that we are supposed to do in the process of repentance, but without Christ's sacrifice we could never be made clean again. The lion Aslan is used to represent Christ in the Chronicles of Narnia, and he comes to help Eustace. One night Eustace, feeling miserable, sees Aslan and follows him to a pool of water. Eustace knows that he will feel better if he can bathe in the water, but Aslan tells him he must undress before getting in. Eustace isn't actually wearing any clothes, but he starts scratching at his scaly skin until the top layer comes off like a snake's. He has to do the same with the second layer, and then the third layer, but that doesn't seem to be doing any good. It feels good to shed those layers, but he knows it isn't enough. Then Aslan tells him, "You will have to let me undress you." Eustace is afraid, but he is desperate and knows that Aslan can help him, so he meekly allows Aslan to do it. This is what Eustace says of this experience: "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." After this, Aslan throws him into the pool and Eustace becomes clean and realizes that he is a boy again.

I think sometimes I approach repentance like Eustace did at first. I find that there is something I want to change about myself, but I don't let the desire to change go deep enough--it's like I'm just peeling off a layer of dragon skin. When I repent like this--not all the way--I find that I keep going back to the same sin or behavior over and over again, feeling a desire to change every time but still doing it again. That's not enough--we have to have a complete change of heart, and I have found that this is a change that can only come if we allow Christ to be the one to change us through the purifying effect of the Holy Ghost. Eustace couldn't peel all of that dragon skin off by himself--he had to let Aslan dig deep and get it all off. The change hurts--not really physical pain, but a spiritual kind of pain--but it also feels so good to let Christ heal us through the power of the Atonement. It makes me think of how Alma described it: "There could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains . . . on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy" (Alma 36:21). The point is, on-the-surface repentance isn't enough, and true repentance must involve the Savior.

I think it's important to remember that "men are, that they might have joy" (2 Ne. 2:25). I've been focusing a lot on the pain of sin, but the wonderful thing about the atonement is that we don't have to keep feeling that pain, because we are meant to have joy. After truly repenting, we feel the joy of being clean and worthy to return to Heavenly Father again, and although we remember the pain, we don't continue to feel the pain. Our journey of progress towards returning to Heavenly Father will involve wonderful joy as we keep trying to become more like Christ. The better we get at emulating Him, the better we will understand the gospel and our purpose and eternal potential, and the more joy we will feel. Using the atonement has a very humbling effect on us, so as we repent and then continue to learn and grow we will be filled with hope, faith, and other righteous qualities that are all necessary if we are to fulfill our divine potential.