So I've been listening to the CDs of a Eugene Peterson lecture series I bought, called "Eat This Book." And in it he is talking about the rarity of people who actually do that, actually shape themselves by what he calls "the primary text of the Christian life" -- the rarity of people who

...don't simply learn or study Scripture, [but] assimilate it. Take it into [their] lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration to the Father.

See, there's our big problem right there. We have way too many people lobbing undigested hard lumps of Scripture at their neighbors, but also way too many people who haven't bothered to assimilate any Scripture before deciding what an act of love even looks like.

The metabolizing image brought to mind a comment by David DiSabatino in his purple prose Prism article on U2: "Bono offers me a living exemplar to diffuse the stereotypes that non-Christians inevitably hold of Christians (By simply dropping his name I can minimize the damage done by televangelist scandals or Harry Potter book burnings). ... he has shown me that the gospel can weave itself into the fabric of my daily life without making me act and speak like a Martian."

See, this is why we need more metabolizers.