Terror seized me by the throat a few months into my engagement to be married. Ardor turned to horror. Hot pursuit suddenly got cold feet. This came with a 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 many 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 two-year-olds.) It certainly describes the way Christians and churches can drift 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 ...