Once there were two young brothers playing together on the living room floor. Well, they were not really playing together, but they were playing at the same time, and without very much conflict. Their parents were both there, sitting and reading.
There were toys all over the floor, but one in particular was under the coffee table, and had gone unnoticed for quite some time. The younger brother, who was shorter, spotted it and thought it was high time he picked it up. And so he did.
Instantly, his older brother was there, and had seized the other end of the toy, and loud cries arose from both of them. Fortunately, the father had glanced up a moment before this, and had seen the entire transaction.
“Let go, John,” he said, and John did, very reluctantly. “Come here for a moment.” John did that too, his lower lip sticking out in a remarkable way.
His father took John up on his lap, and said, “I want to explain something to you—I wanted to explain to you how the devil tries to run the world.”
This surprised his son, who was expecting something along the lines of, “Now share with your brother.”
“The devil tries to make us want things simply because other people have them. And when we try to get them, they always fight back, don’t they? This is how the dragon tricks us into fighting each other, instead of fighting him.”
“The dragon?”
“Yes. You know how in all the stories we read to you that dragons are always tricky? You can never believe them? This is because they are like that first dragon who tricked Adam and Eve into taking something that was not theirs to take.”
“Who did they take it from?”
“From the Lord, who was their neighbor. It was His tree. He had very kindly shared everything else that was His, but at that moment, the only thing they wanted was the thing that was still in His hands. And that is why they wanted it.”
John nodded, and so his father then said. “So what does it mean when you grab a toy like that from your brother?”
“It means that I am not fighting the dragon like I am supposed to.”
“That’s right. Now get back down on the floor and fight the dragon. Not your brother.”