What was involved when Eve tempted Adam in the Garden?
Three and Four Years are Asking…
By Benjamin Groff II GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026
October 7, 2026
Good morning, folks!
A while ago, I was having what I thought was a fairly general conversation about a story in the Bible. I mentioned how many of us grow up hearing about a snake, an apple, and the first sin.
Well! Apparently, I had wandered into the Garden of Eden without checking my vocabulary at the gate.
“It wasn’t a snake, and it wasn’t an apple,” the person quickly corrected me. “It was a serpent and forbidden fruit.”
I nearly asked, “Are we absolutely sure about the produce?”
But I held my tongue. The distinction clearly mattered to this person, and I could respect that.
Still, it got me thinking. If the apple isn’t identified in the original story, how did it become such a familiar part of the version many of us heard as children? Somewhere along the way, somebody supplied the illustration, and the apple has been carrying the blame ever since.
That is quite a reputation for something we now put in a lunchbox.
And then there is the serpent. Tell a three-year-old about a snake, and you may get a nod. Tell that same child about a serpent, and you may have opened a question session that lasts until supper.
“What’s a serpent?”
“A snake.”
“Then why didn’t you say snake?”
There goes your afternoon.
The forbidden fruit could be even more troublesome.
“What kind of fruit?”
“The story doesn’t say.”
“Then how do we know which one not to eat?”
Try explaining that while cutting up an apple for their snack.
Children have a wonderful way of finding the question adults have learned to step around. They haven’t yet developed our habit of nodding politely when an explanation raises three more questions than it answers.
They simply ask.
Why was the fruit forbidden? Why was the tree there? Why could the serpent talk? Can the snake in the backyard talk?
And if it can, should we let it finish before calling somebody?
Before long, you are trying to explain temptation, disobedience, and consequences to someone whose greatest temptation that morning was eating a crayon.
Yet we sometimes treat their questions as a problem. We rush to simplify the story, then become uncomfortable when they notice that the simplified version doesn’t quite add up.
Perhaps the difficulty isn’t always in what children can understand. Perhaps it is in what adults are willing to explain—or willing to admit they don’t know.
A child asking “Why?” hasn’t necessarily challenged anyone’s faith. That child may simply believe you know the answer.
What a compliment. And what a responsibility.
The part that troubles me reaches beyond the snake and the apple. Children ask questions before they learn which questions make a room uncomfortable. They can play happily with another child before an adult gives them a reason to notice differences, draw lines, or decide who belongs.
Then we call the process growing up.
Growing up ought to give us more understanding, more kindness, and better questions. But sometimes we hand children our grudges and prejudices along with our explanations, as though everything we inherited deserves to be passed along.
Perhaps we could leave a few of those things out of the lesson.
This morning, I’m raising my coffee cup to the little ones who keep asking. The ones who can turn a simple explanation into an afternoon’s work with a single word.
And perhaps, before we teach them to stop asking it, we ought to ask it ourselves.
Why?
