As a college student, you have a unique time in your life to really explore what it means to be ‘you’ – what you are doing, where you are going, who you want to be. This time is unique in that you can make those decisions, thereby ‘changing’ yourself into the person you think you want to be, often making decisions quickly, even if they come after much thought and consideration. This change might feel like you have removed the layers upon layers of clothing after winter has faded into spring, and a lighter, freer, newer ‘you’ appears in the wake of your shedding.
That word – shedding – always reminds me of the scene in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ where Eustace, a proud and arrogant little boy, has been turned into a dragon by his own greed and selfish nature – or was he already a dragon, only his outside finally matched his inside? In the wake of his dragonish sorrow, Eustace is visited by the Lion Aslan, who beckons him into a garden; Aslan tells Eustace that he must bathe well at the center. But, as Eustace later reports, “the lion told me I must undress first.” (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 114)How does one undress from a suit of dragon scales? Eustace drags his pointy claws up and down his body, seemingly releasing himself from their painful prison, enjoying the feeling of freedom. But as he goes to step into the well, he sees that his feet are just as they were before: hard, rough, and scaly. Eustace decides that this means it’s only another suit of scales to be taken off – and when he finds a third suit beneath, Aslan intervenes, telling Eustace to quit and let Him do it.
Paul describes out new birth as death – death to the old man, we are made alive in Christ, and the experience of Eustace, coming to terms with his dragonish nature and his inability to ‘undress’ himself from it, is surely reminiscent of our need for the Lord Jesus to heal us from our sins, and to restore us to his image; the image of the One True God.
So what does this have to do with ‘finding yourself’? Just this: all too often we think, like Eustace, that if we just scratch deep enough beneath our layers of scales, then we will find our “true self” in all of it’s glory – or perhaps, all of it’s ruin. There is a mythology that belongs to the University that tells us that if we experience a variety of things, then we will ‘know’ ourselves better, we will grow in wisdom, that we will become a well-rounded person. So go on, the mythology says, and do what you will. It is all for the sake of your education as a person. For some, this means they will drink and party and lose themselves in what turns out to be a four year “good time” while others will take on every committee, every group, class and achievement in an attempt to make themselves into a stellar resume that can’t be passed by. Every group of people on your campus – the stoners, the frat guys and sorority girls, the Young Republicans/Democrats/Libertarians/Anarchists, even the Jesus Freaks and everyday “normal” people – they are all looking for themselves, for their identity.
Eustace wants to get back to himself; he wanted to know himself – in his case, he was seeking restoration. But the beautiful thing about the sequence of events Eustace experiences is that he comes to the end of himself. There is a point at which he has to stop the attempts at scratching off his suits of scales and let Aslan bare his claws, digging deeper into his side than he ever could, a painful and intense experience. And when Aslan throws Eustace into the well – now a boy again – it stings and smarts. But Eustace, a truer boy than he had been even before the dragon incident – soon discovers the joy of his restored nature.
It is his encounter with Aslan that restores Eustace’s nature and personality, and it is our encounter with Jesus that restores ours. Should we go looking anywhere else for our identity? Should we assume that we would ever find a way to be satisfied with ourselves outside of Jesus?
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