Undragoning: Praying As We Are, Not As We Ought

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, by CS Lewis
Progress: 56/124

"Oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?" - Eustace Clarence Scrubb

Okay, so as my husband pointed out regarding my last post, I didn't actually mention Letters to Malcolm. True. It was meant as a sort of preamble to some more specific thoughts on his writing, which I have not yet put down on paper. The Letters are there, though, informing my thoughts and attitudes about prayer. This is a second or third reread for me, and the words in this book have come like old friends to visit me many times through the years.

The most specific words I've been thinking about recently are in his statement that "We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us." (22) Instead of simply being known by God, prayer is an opportunity for us to reveal ourselves to God, to unveil what is in us. Of course He already knows us better than ourselves; the point is that we become participants in the knowing, the revealing, and consequently, the confessing of our sins to God. There's no point in going to the doctor if we won't admit what's wrong. The doctor may know we're sick, our friends may see our disease, our very flesh may be wasting away, but healing will not happen until the patient himself is ready to admit it and receive the help and support that has always been available to him.

So, we must reveal, unveil ourselves to God. We must come to Him as we are, lovehandles and all. We might as well get it all out - all the frustration, longing, failing, needing, wanting, denying, resisting - for He already knows it's there, and yet He still desires to meet with us. There is no sin too scandalous, no request too trivial, to reveal to God. Lewis' comments revolve around the latter (innocent desires), but I believe the former (sinful desires or actions) also applies. The concern I think we both would have is that of irreverance before God. Is it proper to complain to God? No, of course not. But at the same time it is honest to admit that we have complaints, and where better to have those complaints put into proper perspective than at the feet of God? If I wait until I have no complaints before talking to God, I might be out of touch for a while. I can stew about them on my own, cut off from God by my own unconfessed sin. But if I admit my frustrations to God, they will find their answer in Him - just as Job finally got his answer from God:

"Who is this that darkens my counsel without knowldege?
Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you, and you shall answer me." (Job 38:2-3)

"Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?

Let him who accuses God answer him!" (Job 40:2)

God put Job in his proper place, and that made a proper man out of Job: he agreed with God and acknowledged his own unworthiness. I find hope in the fact that although Job struggled with God and the assertions of his unhelpful friends for thirty-seven chapters, in the end, God defended him against his friends as "one who has spoken of me what is right" (Job 42:7,8). All those words of despair, complaint, depression, and challenge, and what God heard in the end was that Job agreed with Him. And then He blessed Job.

So, if we will give our brokenness to God, He will set the bone aright. We have the choice to leave the broken bone to heal on its own, sewing its cells back together with the crooked stitches of a child, forever a handicap in our lives. We also have the choice to allow Him (and yes, I believe He generally prefers to have our permission) to restore our broken bones and make them new again, so they can continue to serve our bodies as they were meant to do.

Having emphasized the importance of our willingness to be truly honest about who we are, the question remains as to what extent we are capable of doing so. As with Eustace and his "undragoning" in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, God rewards our attempts at revelation with His own truer, deeper revelation of who we are (as well as who we ought to be). Would it be fair to suggest that Eustace's first attempts at undressing himself was in part what led him to a willingness to be undressed by the Lion?

"Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you,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." (from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis, page 108-109)

If are to know God, we must strip and be stripped of all that hides the truth in our lives. As The 77s song says, we are to "Pray naked." What beautiful costumes have we rigged up to adorn ourselves in an attempt to feel better about ourselves and to make others think better of us? If must all come off, if we are to be right with God, who "reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light" (Job 12:22), and He in His mercy will not leave us exposed, but will dress us in New Clothes of His own making.

"You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent." - Revelation 3:17-19

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