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I can’t write poetry. I’ve tried to write it, but my efforts have always been terrible.

I can’t write music. I love music and I’m deeply moved by its magic — both words and lyrics — but I have no talent for writing songs.

I tried to write poetry and music when I was young. I even have a few samples of my attempts at verse. They’re awful but even through the awfulness of the bad art, I can feel the anguish of what I was trying to express when my pen wrote the words on paper.

For most of my life, I’ve felt a deep sense of longing. A sense of need. A panic. A fear. An emptiness that craved filling.

When I feel that — as I desperately do tonight — I feel an incredible urge to express it. My heart feels as though it’s going to explode in my chest. There’s so much I want to say — to express, to feel, to confess — and words aren’t ever enough.

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Although my theological roots are completely on the Protestant side, I don’t have the romantic view of Martin Luther and the Reformation that many people seem to have.

Today is the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. That event was the start of a movement against the authority of the existing church. Luther challenged much that was wrong in the church of his day, but he got enough wrong that I’m uncomfortable holding him up as a hero for God.

Many Christians around the world celebrate today as Reformation Day and the 500th anniversary has taken on great significance for some, but I find myself looking at it in a different way. I don’t really see much to celebrate.

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I see the collapse of modern culture in this biscuit promotion at a fast food restaurant.

That might seem alarmist hyperbole, but I see it as a tiny symptom of something much larger. All around us, competence is dying. Incompetence is becoming both expected and accepted — and I can’t think of a more obvious early indicator of a culture’s coming death.

This sign has been in front of a Birmingham-area Burger King for weeks, but the problem is not just a local phenomenon. I see the same sorts of things everywhere, both in the physical space around me and in the incoherent mush of popular media.

The sign says “2 FOR 4 BISCUITS.” Are they offering two biscuits for $4? Or is it four biscuits for $2? If you happen to know what’s typical for Burger King biscuits, maybe you’d have a guess, but even then, it would be just a guess.

If this were unusual, I would just laugh at it and move on, but this sort of casual incompetence is everywhere today. It scares me and it angers me.

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