What is your assessment of what hell will be like for those who go there, whether their punishment will be eternal and whether those in heaven will be aware/care about it?
I don't believe that heaven and hell are places, so I wouldn't even describe anyone as going to either.
More specifically, to talk about "heaven" first requires asking what exactly is meant. Because its use has often been used to refer to two different things in Christian thought:
1) The intermediate state between death and resurrection and
2) The ultimate state at the consummation of history after God has renewed all of creation.
In the first instance, I wouldn't describe heaven as a place; but rather the rather indescribable condition of our existence with Christ between death and resurrection. To speak of "going to heaven" is really just a kind of shorthand of that. Since we often speak of God as reigning from heaven (or the heavens), which is itself a kind of complex topic with a lot of history that I won't get into at the moment; but the essence of it is that "heaven" is shorthand for God's sublime presence, not that God is "up there" as opposed to "down here", as God is everywhere, everywhen, beyond all things, through all things, filling all things, etc. But there is a sense of "heaven" is a particular and immediate presence of God that is outside of our comprehension. It is in this sense that we speak of the saints and angels as being in heaven, before God's throne, even as we await the day Christ returns and the dead shall be raised. This is the intermediate state, what happens between death and resurrection.
The second refers to what is called the Age to Come, or Olam ha-Ba in Hebrew, it is the universe at the end of history, after Christ has returned, the dead are raised, and God renews and restores all things, this refers to where in the Bible it speaks of "a new heavens and a new earth". The description of this includes the ultimate union of heaven and earth, described in the Revelation as the heavenly New Jerusalem, the city of God, coming to dwell on the earth, and that God will dwell with man, and man with God, forever; without need of sun, moon, or stars because the very light of God will permeate all things. I would caution against an overly literal reading of the Revelation in its description of these things, the point is the marriage of heaven and earth, the dwelling of God with us in creation, the renewal of all things, and the light and glory of God filling all of creation.
In that sense, then, heaven is more than a place, it's right here on good ol' terra firma; or even bigger picture--it's everywhere and everything. The universe, all that ever was or is or could be, is made new, whole, healed, and glorified forever.
That's how I would answer the matter of heaven.
As for the matter of hell, I would, likewise say that hell isn't a place either. And, of course, we might need to ask "which hell?".
In the same way that there is the intermediate state between death and resurrection in which those who belong to Christ have their rest in Him until the resurrection; there is likewise what is described as the foretaste of the future judgment, known as Gehenna. Gehenna is one of the words that regularly is translated to "hell" in older English Bibles, along with the word Hades, which is somewhat confusing if you're reading an older English translation in which both words are called "hell".
More specifically Hades is the Greek translation chosen for the Hebrew word she'ol, which means "grave" or "pit" and refers to the common place of the dead in ancient Jewish thought. The place of the dead was, in Jesus' time, understood to be divided into two halves: the abode of the righteous dead called Gan-Eden ("the Garden of Eden") or "Paradise" (from the Greek paradaisos, a loan-word from Old Persian which means "an enclosed garden"); and the abode of the wicked dead called Ge-Hinnom ("Valley of Hinnom") or rendered into Greek as Gehenna. The reference to the Garden of Eden is more obvious to anyone with a general familiarity with the stories of the Bible, but the Valley of Hinnom might be less so. The Hinnom Valley is a very literal valley that was located outside the old city of Jerusalem, in Israel's more distant past it was the center for the cult of Molech worship, where the worshipers of Molech committed grotesque acts of child sacrifice by placing living infants upon a red-hot brass idol literally roasting the infant to death. The association of such grotesque an abomination with the valley left a permanent memory in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people, and hence (quite likely) the idea of a place of burning and misery for the wicked (thus the graphic language of fire, darkness, and death we see associated with Gehenna used by Jesus in the Gospels).
In traditional, orthodox Christian thought Christ, by His death descended into Hades and defeated death, sin, hell, and the devil and rose again, this is known as the Harrowing of Hell, and is what is meant in the Apostles' Creed where it says "[Christ] descended into hell", or in the original Latin descendit ad inferos, literally "descended into the lower regions", i.e. the place of the dead. Through this Christ frees and liberates the prisoners in Hades, and the saints who were formerly in Hades are now with Christ as He sits at the right hand of the Father until His coming again.
Now, the second "hell" to talk about is what would be described as the ultimate fate of the wicked. This is referenced, for example, in the Revelation where St. John has a vision of a lake of fire and sulfur into which the devil, death, hell (hades), and all the wicked are cast after the Last Judgment. Again, I'd caution against taking the Revelation literally, there is no literal lake comprised of fire and sulfur, note how even death and hades are cast into this lake. What is significant, I think, is that St. John refers to this as "the second death". That is, here is a death beyond death.
What is a second death, what is this idea of a death that is more than death? That's the question. It's not about going some place called "hell", it's not about being separated from God (as that's impossible, God is everywhere), it's not about some kind of torture chamber for the wicked. It's something other than all this that we just don't really know.
But I will say this, that the idea of a the wicked being tortured for all eternity by flames (real or figurative) by a wrathful God is a very western and medieval idea--think Dante's Inferno. Notably in contrast to this is how the Eastern Churches have talked about hell. In the Orthodox tradition hell is a state of existence in response to the love of God. Whereas for the righteous dwelling in the love of God is immeasurably joyous for the righteous respond to God's love with love, the wicked's response to God's love is remorse, sadness. Thus here heaven and hell are not these two different directions that the righteous and the wicked go after judgment, but rather what it looks like when two different kinds of people experience God's unconditional, abiding, merciful kindness and love.
The fires of hell, from the Orthodox perspective, are the same as the fires of heaven. It is a heavenly, divine fire, the fire of God's love which burns passionately for the whole of creation. It is only "hell" for the wicked
because they make it hell for themselves.
-CryptoLutheran
