One might describe the relationship of the human race to God, in Christianity, as deeply neurotic. But indeed, how could it be otherwise?
Consider how God must be, in effect, an abyss of apparently opposite extremes. On the one hand, there is the intolerance of evil, the demand for perfection, the insistence that all shall be as it should be, according to his divine and infallible will. There is the anger at sin and injustice, and so on. No one, at least, no one who is unrepentant, will get away with anything. As the guilt-ridden Claudius says,
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ‘tis not so above.
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. (Hamlet 3:3:57-64)
On the other side of the equation there is the infinite forgiveness of even the worst and least excusable of human offenses, the implacable insistence on forgiveness and salvation, mercy to those whom even the most merciful of us could not forgive, even though every pain, every injustice, every indignity ever inflicted on any human being—from the most to the least deserving of them—is always and also suffering for the Almighty who is doing that forgiving.
It is a commonplace that we cannot comprehend God, but what I have just outlined above is one of the infinite ways in which this is so. Therefor, faced with a God who is implacably against us and will never overlook the least of our sins, but at the same time a God who takes our side passionately against the retribution we have set ourselves up for, how can we possibly perceive this God accurately? It is as if we stand in the middle of a road which recedes from us infinitely in both directions. For he is the fierce advocate of flaming sword, but also the one who bleeds and who feels more for the bleeding and for those who blood them than any of us can imagine.
So, we cannot imagine him. And that means, according to our individual situations and temperaments, we are inclined either to see him as a monster of rage and punishment, one who can never be even a little happy with us, let alone satisfied, or some simpering milquetoast who can do nothing but groan impotently on a cross and offer excuses for our every failure, making no demands on anyone at all. The first version presents himself to us as a terror, and the second version is powerless.
God is too big for us to perceive him–except perhaps in rare moments of illumination—in any way other than one of these two distorted ways. The contradiction is not in God, but our smallness. Nor is the truth, I think, a simple matter of finding a “happy middle,” though from the point of view of daily life, that approach may be useful. But I think the truth in this matter is somewhat beyond us.
One must be careful of trying too hard to make sense of God.