Sanctification on Watership Down (Warning: Contains Spoilers)

 Watership Down is a book I never expected to find Christianity in. It had a sort of negative aura about it that I suppose was created by my earlier years in a more dogmatic setting. However, finding the book in the $1 library paperback bookstack, I picked it up and risked the read.

It was not immediately interesting and rather odd at first, but I grew to like the matter-of-fact natural descriptions of rabbit life. The book felt real. I kept turning the pages and my sympathies grew with the main rabbits (Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver) and the other characters as they left their doomed warren and risked terror after terror before reaching Watership Down.

It was the stories about El-Ahrairah that bothered me. I've never had much love for writing that holds up a narrative, and the odd little legends about El-Ahrairah stealing lettuces and tricking Prince Rainbow were not to my liking. I skipped several of them. However, a guilty reader's conscience compelled me to read the whole thing, and it was through the legends that I discovered what I found lacking in the book: purpose.

The end of the book is terribly exciting as the rabbits fight for does from Efrafa, a warren ruled by the tyrannical and cunning General Woundwort. The rabbits of Watership Down, who have been telling stories about El-Ahrairah mainly for entertainment, now begin, almost unconsciously, to apply the principles of the tales. Bigwig goes to Efrafa to find does, and he uses a cunning and creative trick to get the sad and downtrodden does out of the warren. The main character and Chief Rabbit of Watership Down, named Hazel, must devise a cunning plan to get the does across a river with General Woundwort at his heels. Both of these plans could have come from the annals of rabbit myth.

The last of the book, a life-or-death battle with General Woundwort and the Efrafrans, culminates in Hazel's clever plan to use an enemy (a dog) to defeat the Efrafrans. This is an application of one of El-Ahrairah's tricks to a current situation.

With peace restored, the warren on Watership Down grows and prospers and the rabbits multiply. The old legends are told, but new ones are mixed with the old, and the aging Hazel finds that he cannot discern the tales of El-Ahrairah's life from the tales of his own. His doings are told as the doing of El-Ahrairah. Their lives have grown in character together. One day El-Ahrairah himself comes to visit the aging Hazel, and Hazel finds new life as he goes with the angelic El-Ahrairah, leaving his tired and worn body behind.

This is a wonderful picture of sanctification. We read the word of God and learn from the life of Christ, and the Holy Spirit works in us to make our lives like Christ's. As we mature as believers, our lives should grow more and more like Christ's until they become intertwined. Like Hazel, we will find that our own works are lost in those of Christ. (Ephesians 2:10, Galatians 2:20) That is our aim, which we will never completely accomplish. However, someday a far greater Hero than El-Ahrairah will come for us, and we, too, will find our bodies no longer necessary as we fly onward to a newer and freer life.

Soli Deo Gloria.