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Let's change your account just a little bit, and you'll see why. Instead of threatening her with horrible punishment, Mr. Right rescues her from Mr. Wrong, who wishes to see her confined in a dungeon and subjected to horrible tortures for the rest of her days. Problem is, Mr. Wrong looks very attractive before he's got his hooks in you, and Mr. Right has to humble himself to persuade the young lady of this fact -- which she doesn't really want to believe because Mr. Wrong is so dashing, and so handsome, and so tempting . . . .

God does not threaten, nor does God consign a soul to Hell. The rebellious soul itself insists on going there. As C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, "All who are in hell, choose it."

Another quote from that marvelous little book, which may be his best. Sarah Smith comes down to the entrance to Heaven to meet her husband and try to persuade him to give up his narcissism in order to 'enter into joy'. He is a whinging little passive-aggressive worm who guilted her into misery. He refuses to give up his self-pity and vanishes from the entrance to Heaven - Sarah Smith rises and moves away, apparently unaffected by his damnation. The narrator objects:

“ ‘And yet…and yet…’ said I to my Teacher, ‘even now I am not quite sure. Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?’
‘Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthly life.’
‘Well, no. I suppose I don’t want that.’
‘What then?’
‘I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.’
‘Ye see it does not.’
‘I feel in a way that it ought to.’
‘That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.’
‘What?’
‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’
‘I don’t know what I want, Sir.’
‘Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it; or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject in themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe . . . . Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those that insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.’”

—Let’s change your account just a little bit, and you’ll see why. Instead of threatening her with horrible punishment, Mr. Right rescues her from Mr. Wrong, who wishes to see her confined in a dungeon and subjected to horrible tortures for the rest of her days. Problem is, Mr. Wrong looks very attractive before he’s got his hooks in you, and Mr. Right has to humble himself to persuade the young lady of this fact — which she doesn’t really want to believe because Mr. Wrong is so dashing, and so handsome, and so tempting . . . .—

To me, the analogy still fits - choose me or else. Satan did not create hell. God did.

And I tend to agree with the Lewis quote. As I spar with non-Christians I’m seeing a pattern - they are actually choosing to ignore God and his message of salvation.And they are doing it consciously. Many of them have an attitude of “even if what you say is true, I’m not interested. It is then that I leave them with Ecclesiastes. They shall eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor - and then they die like animals. The only exception is that they will be resurrected and go to death and destruction for they are not written in the book of life. And death and destruction are pretty final words. Eternally final. Something that dies and is destroyed by God does not come back.

I think the story of Sarah Smith in the book was a good one. I think it also touches on something that many have a really hard time with: How those that enter heaven will “feel” about those loved ones that didn’t make it.

I believe Lewis touches on something that definitely falls into the “now we see as through a glass dimly, but then face to face” sort of things. For all I know, assuming the annihilation thing is what happens, we may be able to fully grasp to the core of our being that what those that didn’t make it could have had doesn’t matter since, no longer existing, they are completely and utterly irrelevant. Forgotten as if they never existed.

I think of that when I think of God saying he chooses to forget things. At least I hope he does. ;-)