The Real You and the Real Jesus
The wonderful thing about the gospel is that when we step inside God’s sacred light, we find healing in ways nothing else can provide. We cannot heal ourselves. We simply don’t know how. We think we can change, but only Jesus can get deep enough.
Jesus must deal with you—the real you, not the dressed-up you. He’ll strip you down first. C.S. Lewis illustrates in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Eustace is in love with his treasures. One night, he falls asleep with a gold bracelet on his arm and transforms into a dragon, becoming an outward manifestation of his inward self. The bracelet gets tighter and tighter, and he can’t get it off. He’s driven from humanity and in a moment of loneliness begins to cry. Aslan, the lion, the Jesus figure, arrives and asks Eustace to follow him.
They go down to a well. The water clear and inviting. Eustace senses the well can heal him. But before getting in, Aslan tells him to undress. Of course, dragons don’t wear clothes. But dragons are kind of like snakes. He realizes Aslan meant he must shed his skin first. So he starts scratching and scratching. He says, “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 bath.”
But his scales grew back. So he goes through the exercise again. But it grows back again and again. Aslan says, “You will have to let me undress you.” Eustace was afraid, but he saw the task was impossible in his own hands.
“I was afraid of his claws,” Eustace said, “but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to 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...
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it 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 as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again...
“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me...in new clothes.”
The new clothes Jesus provides are better by far than any we can make on our own. They are worn by those willing to expose themselves to his care. It may feel severe, but the only way to true healing is to let Jesus undress us and then to clothe us. Jesus can get at the real us. Every other way is only superficial.
