Let me tell you my story. I used to be an hours praying, Bible disecting, days fasting Christian who used to go to church every day of the week that there was a service (which, at the time was 4 times a week, including rehersals). I could see the influence of the Devil in any source of media. And make a good argument by the bible. I was never irrational.
How I felt about dragons. There was a time when I did not like dragons. Because dragons associated to snakes associated to the Devil. I didn’t really mind snakes. At the time, I just thought they shouldn’t be kept as pets, but they are still God’s creation, and God used snakes. Like Moses’s staff, or the bronze snake in the desert. But dragons are not creation of God. What is the dragon?
To me, the dragon was the devil pretending to be God. Specially Chinese dragons. The snake was a clever creature in the garden of Eden, who gave Adam and Eve the knowledge of right and wrong (in other words, stole their innosence, corrupted their innocent minds). Asian dragons are wise, and they impart knowledge to mankind. So, these are not ordinary snakes God’s creation. These were the snakes representative of the Devil. That’s what dragons were to me.
To me, the Asian dragons were born as any other mythology. Distortion of the truth and some influence of the Devil. The dragon had been given aditional features to be more awesome (in the more traditional sense), and had been made big and celestial, and even been given power over nature. It had become a deity. The dragon was a god, like the Devil has always wanted to be.
So what about the other dragons? To me, they were still representatives of the Devil. Maybe not worshiped gods, or at least not directly, but devilish snakes stealing the love of the people. Dragons are cute and friendly? Demons are shapeshifting deceivers. They can be cute and friendly too. To me, dragons were teaching people to accept demons if they are cute and act friendly. Because they only pretend to be, but they really want to condemn your soul. Or at least, that was my perspective. And hey, according to Islam, there is a slight possibility that demons can genuinely turn good. Anyway:
I also did not like when I spent nine hours in fasting and prayer and reading the bible and singing christian songs in my room all by myself, and felt in communion with God, but went to my Christian uncle’s house to visit, and we would watch a movie, to which I would be tempted not just by myself, but by my family. And even if the movie was not about anything of the Devil, when we would finish watching the movie, that feeling of communion with God was gone.
Despite that, all my life I have been fascinated by lizards and dinosaurs. So of course, I was naturally fascinated by dragons. But the bible says “deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me”. And that’s what I did. A few months after, I read Job. I have read like 66% of the bible. I had heard of the leviathan before, but most of the time, I forgot, and also, because I had only heard about it, I did not know what to think. Even after I read about it, I was not sure what to think. I was going back and forth between my bible and my nearly 10lb biblical dictionary. And I read the psalms. Specially psalm 104. After a while, it seemed more reasonable to me that leviathan is a real animal. And dragon is no more devil than it is wolf or snake. Dragons are no more devils than lions are gods. God is not literally a lion, and even if he were, that doesn’t make all lions gods. The Devil is not literally a dragon, and even if it were, the rest of dragons are not devils.
But most dragons are not like leviathan either. And those that are, often are compared to gods. Like Godzilla. Btw I also did not like Godzilla because people compared him to gods. And Godzilla is not a dragon, but one of the most similar things to leviathan.
So, dragons were still representative of the devil to me for a while. But later I started thinking about it. Were they really representative of the Devil? They were mostly just like normal animals. And then I stopped thinking of dragons as the Devil.
But I still had all the other issues with fantasy and dustraction and stuff. So yeah.
