“God is the outward projection of man’s inward nature…. Religion is the disunion of man from himself; he sets God over against himself as an opposed being. God is not what man is—man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man the finite being; God is perfect, man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sinful…. What man is not, but wishes to be, he represents to himself as an object, to be realized in God…. Man—this is the mystery of religion—projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject.”

–Ludwig Feuerbach

What leads us into sinful patterns? For one thing: The idea that it’s not fair that God knows more than we do about ourselves, and about reality in general (which is itself a patterning pattern). Based on this negativity we build personal philosophies, and make life decisions off of those, that lead us into destruction (even as Christians). We build theologies that attempt to reconstruct God into images that look more like what we think God should look and act like, rather than how He actually looks; torn and beaten on the cross of Calvary.

We fool ourselves into thinking that we are genuinely worshipping the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ, when in fact we are really only coping with God; insofar, that we have constructed a version of Him that reflects our desires and habituations.