I always find it fascinating when you have some conversation/thought/discussion and then all of a sudden you are flooded with tidbits from different directions, all related to the same topic, but none coming related sources. For example, you tell somebody a cherry limeade sounds really good, then somebody else tells you that they really miss Sonic (who just happens to have the best cherry limeades), then while googling something else, you find out that Sonic is looking for employees at a newly opened Sonic just down the highway. That happened yesterday, and I love those kinds of intersections of info and thought that bear fruit, almost by serendipity.

A similar thing has happened the past several days on another front. Last Wednesday at our Bible study something came up in our discussion about the Western dichotomy of body & spirit. We were talking about some of the theological ramifications of treating the body as a mere shell of no importance (a common Western idea that worms itself into our beliefs, but not a particularly Biblical one). Our discussion was short because of the schedule, and I’d wished we could have gone further and deeper into the topic. Earlier this week I came across a couple blog posts by Jay Quin, and elder in the Church of Christ, that deal with this very thing. Today, I came across a “twinterview” (that’s a Twitter interview…shouldn’t it be “Twitterview”?) of Scot McKnight, author of The Jesus Creed and The Blue Parakeet, who also recently wrote Fasting. Lo and behold, what is one of the issues Scot McKnight goes into very quickly? Yep. The Western dichotomy of body/spirit. Rather than rehash it all here, I’m going to point you to these two very different, unconnected, but very related resources, and if you have yet more resources to contribute, leave a note in the comments.

• Jay Guin: Backgrounds of the Restoration Movement: Gnosticism, Part 1
• Jay Guin: Backgrounds of the Restoration Movement: Gnosticism, Part 2
• Jay Guin: Backgrounds of the Restoration Movement: Gnosticism, Part 3
• Jay Guin: Backgrounds of the Restoration Movement: Gnosticism, Part 4
• Scot McKnight: “Twinterview” on fasting

Update: Link 4 to Jay Guin’s series now available.