I'm sure many readers will have heard of Fr Gerard W Hughes SJ, and his best seller, "God of Surprises". (From his 2014 obituary: "For many readers, the book became a spiritual lifeline that kept them within the church at a time when they were thinking of leaving.")

Anyway, in that book, Fr Hughes gave the allegory of the pre-Vatican 2 God of being like a stern humourless "Uncle George", who demands of children that they see him each week without fail. He takes them to the basement to show them the furnace and he says to them: this is where you will go if you don't turn up every week. Then after visiting Uncle George, Mum and Dad asks the children if they love Uncle George "with all their heat mind and soul and all their strength". Loathing the monster, they say yes to avoid joining the queue at the furnace.
(Suggest you read the actual chapter, No 3, in his book to get the full flavour of it).

Such a great summary of the scary pre-V2 church, to which JPII tried to return us.