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As a Catholic, who is lost thinking about all this, I wish somebody can explain the mysteries to me.

First God created us, he "loves us"? He asked us not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Here the question what is wrong with eating from the tree, and if we made a mistake, ah our father who loves us, why can he just FORGIVE us? How many times did you or I forgive our children for doing something that we asked them not to?

Then he is not happy with being upset with us, and punishing us, he wants be unhappy and upset with our children, and grand children. Show me grandfather who is upset with his grandchildren because their father once ate from the forbidden cookies one time? Now he continues to be upset thousands of years after the fact, and cannot let go of that ONE mistake until he lets "his only begotten son" get killed.

Please help explain this messy story.

***why can he just FORGIVE us?***

Excellent question.

Because He is, ultimately, completely different from us in that He is perfectly Holy. We are not - not even close - and therefore we have a hard time understanding what holiness is.

Holy means, basically, that He is completely separate from sin and evil.

His holiness is perfect in that He makes no compromise with sin. If He were to make the slightest compromise then He would cease to be a God worth worshiping and heaven would cease to be a place to which one would wan to go.

If God were to compromise with you over your sin then what would stop Him from, by degrees, coming to a compromise with Kim Jong Il or Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler?

The biggest argument against the statement "why can't God just forgive" is this: If He could have done that then WHY did Jesus have to die such a horrible death?

Go do an extended Bible study on holiness. You see pretty quickly why He doesn't just forgive.

****Now he continues to be upset thousands of years after the fact, and cannot let go of that ONE mistake until he lets "his only begotten son" get killed.***

That one mistake injected a poison into the human race that every one of us is now infected with - the poison of rebellion. Jesus didn't just die for that one sin. He did for all the sins that humanity has ever committed. He died for those murderous thoughts you've had towards people and for the adulteries you've toyed with in your heart. He took the lash for every lie you've ever told. He was beaten for your sins (and mine).

I wish somebody can explain the mysteries to me.

Here you go. This is an excellent catechism that can be taught on many levels, not all of it is on line though, the section you are interested in is.

My Catholic Faith 18. Adam and Eve Our First Parents

And here is the same section from the Baltimore Catechism:

Adam and Eve