Southern Baptist Pastor Danny Cortez recently came out in support of gay marriage for Christians, after a multi-year process of studying and processing. He and his church are now attempting to make a "third-way" path, accepting into leadership both those in same-sex relationships and those who believe that this is wrong. For this stance they were removed from the Southern Baptist Convention.
He was interviewed last fall, and I was struck by the following passage in particular:
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I think too often we look at the LGBT people as an issue. We look at our theology from a petri dish trying to analyze them and fix them. So what I’ve told people is that we have to make a distinction between the scientist and the medical doctor, which is analogous to the theologian and the pastor. As a doctor, the theologian’s kept telling me “keep giving this medicine.” But this one application of scripture is literally killing people and you keep telling me to give it. As a doctor, I’m telling you it’s not working. You guys might know the “Science” but when you bring it to real life practical situations—it doesn’t work. It isn’t bearing good fruit. Because of this, our interpretation needs to be recalled and re-evaluated until it no longer does harm, because that is the end of the commandment.
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What do you think about this analogy between pursuit of knowledge and pursuit of healing? Is there a pattern we can see in Scripture of how Jesus deals with seeming contradictions between "knowledge" and "love"?
You can watch Danny's entire hour-long sermon below, where he explains why he changed his mind in front of his entire church.