To be made in God’s image actually requires that we also make God in ours. In such a view, Christological self-projection might be less a problem and more a stop-gap measure on the jagged Way to God. Not a sin but a strategy. Because if Christ’s perfection can consist in his own striving towards it, then so too can ours. As such, Christological self-projection might be the very practice by which we and God grope our way towards finding each other in the dark, towards the uniting embrace that will either destroy us both or save us.
