12 yr old son believes Adam and Eve got a raw deal

[Gorgias]

Just because there’s no literal meaning does not mean that there’s no actual event.

I’m not claiming there wasn’t an actual event. In fact, the Catechism explicitly affirms that there was!

When you state that because it was not a literal depiction, hence Satan was not there (no talking serpent)

You’re misconstruing what I wrote. If you want to hold to a literalistic interpretation, then you cannot claim that Satan was present. If, on the other hand, you want to allow for a figurative interpretation, then naturally you can say that the serpent represents Satan.

Did Adam actually eat or not eat from the fruit

If you argue for a figurative interpretation, then there’s no problem asserting “there was no fruit”.

Please understand that I’m not being disrespectful or dismissive

It’s all good. I’m just pointing out that a strictly literalistic interpretation of Genesis 3 must be honest enough to admit that there is no mention of Satan in that chapter.

 

[ColorMomma]

I would tell him that God knows it’s not good for us to get everything we want. He gave Adam and Eve the riches of the garden, a personal relationship with Him, and a life of love and ease. Yet it was not enough for them, even without considering the influence of the devil. Greed is a human condition.

If a parent gives a child everything they want, they become spoiled and ungrateful. The same is true for God’s relationship with humanity. We should be thankful and obedient, not because God requires it, but because it is good for us. It makes us better and closer to Him.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

You could actually make the case that it was Jesus who got the raw-est deal out the the whole incident.

We don’t worship a God who sits “up there” dispensing rules and regs. We worship a God who was willing to be one of us, and go through what we go through and fix the messes we made and die a humiliating and painful death.
None of which was required of Him

 

[runningdude]

He is stuck on Adam and Eve being very innocent like a toddler and how then unfair God was.

He does have high functioning autism and tends to have trouble with the abstract concepts of the Christian religion.

He my be empathizing with Adam and Eve, and worried they, like himself, had difficulty discern others intentions and getting unfairly in trouble for it. Addressing his concerns from this angle may help.

Background on the rest of his question:

God didn’t give us free will, the devil did because the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the only reason why human beings know right from wrong. It is because of what the devil did in the garden that we have more responsibility than an animal does. So the devil gave us free will not God.

The Tree of Knowledge nothing at all!

Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and full of Grace (just as the Blessed Mother!). The serpent told the women that it would make them like God, and she envied God, believing he was denying them something.

So she and her husband ate of the fruit. Nothing happened. The snake lied. They felt deep, crippling shame, and hid from the Lord. They covered their bodies to avoid looking at his image.

When they broke God’s one explicit law, they already new it was wrong to do so. They did not need the tree to learn that. They knew they were created in God image, but did not share God’s nature; they sought to change their nature by stealing God’s knowledge by disobeying him. They innately new this to be wrong.

God had given them everything, and they did not trust him. God promised if they ate of the tree, they would die - God did not lie.