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Oh, you’re right, Wolflodge; the Bible isn’t a bad influence and Christianity is no worse than any other religion. (It’s my own.) It’s just that it makes me cross when people decide that they’re going to be threatened by everything that can be even remotely connected to a religious warning. The Bible is largely allegory: it was written for the ages, all right, but in order for it to make sense to hundreds of generations to come it had to be written allegorically. Want something to represent Evil? Why not use a gigantic reptile–it’s a mental image that will stick, and people can garnish the image with as many fangs and spikes as they please. They might as well have chosen a giant hyena, or a volcano, but maybe they wanted something that didn’t really exist so that their readers wouldn’t panic when they actually ran into one. But it’s a representational figure, not the evil itself. Then silly people decide to take the allegory literally, instead of thinking things through.
The dragon generally represents power. Europe decided to use it to represent evil power. China, on the other hand, created dragons that represented the power of good. We all know that power can be good or evil, depending on how it’s used. A person who draws a dragon is not creating a work of evil, unless evil is in their heart when they create it. It’s all in how you use the feeling that generates the drawing. And frankly, not many people can generate true evil; pettiness, selfishness, and anger, yes, but thank goodness very few are evil.
It reminds me of the cat. He wants to stay inside because it’s nice and warm and the food is always there. But because his life is now so easy, he can’t stand the boredom, and every now and then he will sink his claws into someone’s leg just so that he can have the excitement of being chased. If he were outside fending for himself, he wouldn’t be so desperate for excitement, but his life would be a lot harder. People do the same thing, looking for things to be viewed with alarm and fretting themselves up. It’s so silly! 😕
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