The search for God, the search for spiritual community

My friend Peter Turiansky asked me this question:

> Andrew,
>
> You have spent a good part of your adult life seeking a deity and a faith community that meet certain criteria that have been established by, well,
> yourself. Does it not occur to you that any such god would be one of your own making, and not a real one at all?

I answered thusly:

The search for the community is not the same thing as the search for
God. Truly, I search for a community that shares my understanding of
God, rather than a community to tell me that God something different
than I already experience God as being.

The real question that applies to my own search is: how do we know the
"truth"? Do we need to be told by a traditional or dogmatic (etc.)
religious path, or do we need to find out for ourselves? When I
resist/leave a church, it is usually because the dictated
understanding of God does not compute. Rather than creating God, I
feel I am constantly discovering God, and because that has been
happening (for me) at such a personal level,it is increasingly obvious
to me that theologically I cannot be stuffed into a pre-existing box.

The appeal to Episcopalianism was the openness in terms of individual
interpretation. It seems to me that this is the case among Mennonites
as well, though as I said, there is much I do not know.

This actually addresses your previous question about me being a
closeted atheist. I might as well address that here!

I cannot find the article I mentioned..but it differentiated between
different kinds of belief, and I'm probably not being 100% faithful to
what that writer said, but that isn't really important:

1. Absolute certainty that there is a God, and "I" know that God.
--Strong Theism
2. Absolute certainty that there is a God, but I don't know that God.
--Seeker with Theism (not the right term)
3. It's possible that there is a God, but I don't believe there is.
(Atheistic agnosticism)
4. It's possible that there is a God, and I believe there is.
(Theistic agnosticism)
5. I know for certain that there is no God. (Strong Atheism)
6. We cannot know either way, period. (Strong Agnosticism)

Something like that.

I fit number 4. My understanding of God is very non-specific. I
believe there is a God...and that God may be a neutral energetic force
of creation, or a loving energy, or a potentially personal God, or
whatever.

I believe in afterlife, that science is the study of creation and is
therefore true theology, that scriptures are highly questionable but
potentially inspirational.
Some meandering thoughts anyway. I'm sure I'm leaving a lot still
muddled, but this is God we're discussing, after all.