Can we be friends with a dragon?

Yesterday, I finished reading a short book to Chase called The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Graham. It was written in 1938. We've been studying medieval life, and this book was suggested in our history curriculum. We enjoyed the book immensely. There was a battle scene between a dragon and St. George that Chase really liked and the language made me laugh.

The story is about a dragon who isn't very interested in acting like a typical dragon. He'd rather sit around and compose sonnets. He becomes friendly with a bookwormish boy who warns him that the townsfolk nearby won't really like him. When St. George comes to town to fight the dragon, the boy becomes a manager of the whole affair, arranging a meeting between the saint and the dragon and encouraging them to put on a mock battle. St. George pretends to take out the dragon and then walks him into town where the dragon enjoys a banquet and enters society. The book finishes with the saint, the dragon, and the boy walking off singing together.

Last night I recalled a book I read a year or so ago about children's literature. I can't remember what it was called, but it posed the argument that if you're trying to teach your child a Christ-centered worldview through literature, you need to be aware of story lines that make evil friendly and tamable. In the Bible, Satan is portrayed as a serpent and throughout history the figure of the dragon has represented pure evil. I can't think of anything today that still holds such a strict connotation of evil. The many dragons that frequent stories these days have all been tamed (think Eragon or Dragon Rider). It seems like people have been writing dragons into this role for a while.

As I was thinking through this all last night, my thought train led me to a conversation that I recently had with Chase in which he asked, "Can't we become friends with Satan?" By this he was asking, not if he could be evil, but if we could make Satan good. Chase has followed many story lines in his seven and half years, and perhaps there has been some confusion about how to treat the bad guy. I told him that there can be no compromise with evil. We can't pretend to fight our dragons and then bring them into society. We need to slay them. We need our St. Georges to be dragon-fighters. Chase needs to be a dragon-fighter.

There are still great stories available, though. Just today we bought the book Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges. This is a great version of the old, old tale, full with an ugly, evil dragon and a brave, selfless knight. Chase was really interested in the battle scene. Maybe we'll look for some fencing lessons...