Some Of The World's best-loved stories have to do with transformations of character. In the Bible, people even get new names to symbolize the change: Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul. Their lives show that deep reformation isn't accomplished effortlessly, like trading a winter coat for a summer shirt. But neither can human effort alone make it happen. It is divine power that transforms.
Understanding Love as the creator gives us a different estimate of everything.
In His Delightful Series of children's tales, The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis underscores the need for divine help in effecting spiritual transformation. In one book, a dreadfully selfish boy named Eustace is turned into a dragon. See The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 3, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, p. 90 . The disadvantages of this lumbering self outweigh the advantages, and Eustace longs to be a boy again, and perhaps a better boy at that. The great lion Aslan (the "Christ" figure in these allegorical tales) appears and tells him that he can shed this dragon hide the way snakes cast off their skins. Eustace eagerly begins to peel off layers of ugly skin, only to find that there are endlessly more dragon-layers underneath. When Eustace sees that he just can't do it, the lion tells him that he will have to let him do it. When Aslan does the job, Eustace not only returns to a normal appearance, but also starts being a genuinely nicer fellow. The lion's role symbolizes the fact that only Christ, the power of infinite Truth and Love, can strip away the wrong concepts of self that would bury any of us. And, in this way, the Christ uncovers our pure, original nature.
