Caricatures of God

"History...is littered with caricatures of God, like so many mental idols which have led people either to cruelty or atheism. But how, in modern times, after the growth of liberty and the critical spirit, could people have accepted a God who seemed to them worse than themselves, or at least inferior to the highest demands of a conscience secretly nourished by the Gospel?

People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without.... [E]nclosed as we are within ourselves and also enclosed 'in his hand', we can know him only if he freely establishes with us a relationship in which distance and nearness are made the setting for a Word, of Someone speaking to someone."

-Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism

I'd had this book on my shelf for years before I finally decided to read it. And was I ever pleasantly surprised. I bought it on recommendation, then left it unread since the title made it sound like some dry as dust academic tome. Boy, was I ever wrong. Now I try to re-read it every Lent.