Striking the right balance
It seems to me that in order to have the right balance between our need to personalize our faith and the need to not shape the Truth into our own version of reality is to continually submit our understanding of things to what has been revealed in the Scriptures (I am assuming that we regard the Scriptures as God's revealed Truth).
Doing this will keep us from sectarianism, since all believers would share the same point of reference. It would not be necessary for all to understand the meaning of Scripture in the exact same way to achieve unity in this issue. What is essential is the humility that will express itself in accepting that only God is absolutely right and that none of us have a complete understanding of the Scriptures.
If we adopt this posture of continually submitting ourselves to the Truth of the Scriptures, we may find it difficult to define ourselves in any other way than that of being simply "believers." While we may choose to affiliate with a particular association or denomination, our identity as followers of Yeshua will be just that and not according to any other label. This must be the case, because our humble attitude of submission will regularly challenge those things that give our associations their unique character. If we will truly humble ourselves in this way, and allow God's Word to challenge our subjectivity, we will hold our personal views much more lightly than how most of us have up until now.
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