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Heart & Soul / The Back Page

Terror seized me by the throat a few months into my engagement to be married. fundamental realization: If I had this woman, I couldn't have any of the others. If I said "yes" to one, I was saying "no" to millions. Not that this was the breadth of my options, mind you--but whatever options I might have had before I said my vows, they were no more after I said them.

I gingerly raised some of these concerns with the woman who nevertheless became my wife. That was twenty-three years ago. She's forgiven me, I think.

Every yes contains a no. And if you can't learn to say one, you won't learn to say the other. (Maybe that's why we put up with 2-year olds.) It certainly describes the way Christians and churches can drift off into heresy and confusion.

I know of a church whose new pastor has led it into serious, even fatal, theological error. The mystery is that his predecessor, a thoroughly orthodox, godly and beloved man, had pastored the church for more than three decades and had never preached ...

March
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