[TruthTalk] The Humanity of Jesus

[Judy Taylor]

From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Concerning the flesh of animals: Judy, what is your understanding of animal behavior?    jt: Well I have had dogs, cats, guinea pigs, turtles, parakeets, and fish; my brother had ferrets and pigeons, and my father-in-law raised chickens and hampshire hogs.   What causes the birds to sing and the whales to migrate for thousands of miles?  What causes the pigeons to be able to use the earth's magnetic field to find their way over thousands of miles?  What makes the beaver know how to build a dam?  What motivates the blue bird to feed its young, and to nudge them out of their nest at the right time?  What makes the Monarch butterfly travel across the oceans?  What motivates the loon to fly south in the winter and back north again in the summer?  What tells the geese to fly in a V-formation and switch off the lead bird from time to time?  What causes the salmon to travel from the ocean upstream for many miles to find their original place of birth?  What tells the female salmon how to lay her eggs and what tells the male how to fertilize them?  What motivates the young water snake to eat his first meal?  How does this snake know what to eat or how to swallow it?   jt: God told Job that He is responsible for all that. He gives the animal kingdom their survival instincts.   Obviously I could go on and on.  Ask yourself, what motivates these animals to do these things?  Is it spirit or flesh?  Surely you must agree with me that it is flesh.   jt: My father-in-law told our daughter when she asked him if pigs had good sense - that God gave them "hog sense"  I liked that :)   Man also has many desires and aptitudes like those of animals.    jt: Wait a minute.  Biology may relegate mankind to the "animal kingdom" but this is not how it is supposed to be. God gave man dominion over animals - he is not supposed to be acting like one.   We relate to it most readily when we consider hunger and sleep, and perhaps even reproductive behavior, but it goes much further than that.  I think the primary difficulty that you and I might have in communicating is perhaps in your not grasping how much human desire comes from the flesh, and perhaps not recognizing that even simple carnal desires like hunger can lead to sin.   jt: This would depend on where one is consistently walking David ie "after the flesh or after the Spirit" because "To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace (Romans 8:5,6)  I understand that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted/tested. He passed where the first Adam failed.  After this I see nothing in any of the four gospels that would indicate to me that he had daily struggles with carnality.  In fact at one point when the disciples were hungry - he told them "His meat was to do the will of the Father" ... and he was able to sleep in a boat in the middle of a violent storm .... What an example.   judyt