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My Personal Philosophy Of The Church Of God

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Since I have become at Vanderbilt Divinity School, some of the most frequently asked questions that I receive are, “what are you going to do with that? Are you going to become a preacher?” I reply with the same answer every time, and that is “I plan to do community organizing and development through divinity. I am not interested in preaching to people whom are already saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, fire baptized and got a mind to see what the end gon’ be. I am more interested in serving the needs of who Jesus considered the ‘least of these.’” In this paper I will reflect on how Matthew 25:34-40 has shaped my personal theology in reference to ministry and eschatology. Using examples from my personal theological…show more content…
For years, I aligned myself solely with this eschatology that proclaimed that if we just believed in Jesus’ resurrection and were baptized we would earn a golden ticket into the pearly gates. I was taught to distance myself from sinners, those who did not believe the way that I did; despising them for either their disbelief or other belief system. When I was GOGIC, I could not hang with Baptist Christians, because they were heathens and their theology did not include the “power of the Holy Ghost.” When I went to the Baptist church, I was told not to associate myself with COGIC Christians because they relied to heavily on the Holy Spirit and their church doctrine, which made them “holier-than-though.” They would say sanctimonious things like “holiness is still right!” and were quick to inform people who did not believe the same doctrine as them, that they were going to hell because they did not “really” know Jesus.
But “when I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things” 1 Corinthians 13:11. As an adult I became very frustrated with this “hand-me-down theology.” I felt it necessary to know God for myself. By the age of 16 I had witnessed thousands of impoverished people attend church religiously every week, and believe that God will allow them into heaven if they strongly believed in Jesus Christ. Not to reduce the importance of believers by any means, but authentic
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