I stand by my point, no loving god would condemn his creation to torture.
Correct. I wouldn't follow a God who arbitrarily sent people to hell for not accepting a proposition. Also, I would be wary of interpreting apocalyptic/prophetic passages in terms of absolute, solid, theological doctrine, as they aren't meant to be read that way.
"While he saw hell as a necessary concomitant of the justice of God, Thomas Aquinas did not divorce God’s justice from his love. The divine love is related to hell for the purpose of mitigating the sufferings of the damned. In his view the purpose of hell is not exclusively retributive. Moreover, it serves as a deterrent to evil and as a basis for moral order in the universe…”
“Man is in hell not because God is absent but because he is present, and therefore man is constantly reminded of his guilt and infamy. Hell is exclusion from communion with God, but not exclusion from the presence of God (we interpret 2 Thess 1:9 as referring to an exclusion from man’s side but not from God’s side. Man shuts himself off from the salvation of the Lord and from the glory of his might, but he cannot escape from this glory (Phil 2:9-11). Cf. Revelation 14:10 which speaks of sinners in hell being tormented ‘in the presence of the Lamb…’”
“The metaphor that most nearly describes hell is not a concentration camp presided over by the devil, but a sanitorium for sick souls who are ministered to by Jesus Christ… His light still shines even in the darkness of man’s hell… We can rest assured that those in hell are in the hands of a God who is both righteous and merciful, and we can trust that his mercy as well as his justice will be manifest among them, though this does not mean final universal salvation.”
“Hell is not outside of the compass of God’s mercy nor the sphere of his kingdom, and in this sense we call it the last refuge of the sinner… only rejection of the grace of God keeps us in hell… the only sin that is unforgivable is the sin against the Holy Spirit, rejecting and refusing the offer of divine grace (cf. Mt 12:31, 32; Mk 3:28, 29; Heb 12:25).”
“Hell will not be seen as an evil, but as the place where those who reject Christ are still cared for by Christ –and not simply as Lord and Judge but as Savior and Healer… we should not forget that God placed upon Cain a sign for his protection, even though he was condemned to wander in a far country… God will punish our transgressions, but he will not remove from us his steadfast love or be false to his faithfulness (Ps 89:31-34)” (“Heaven and Hell” in Bloesch, Donald, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 2, pp. 211-234)
“…sin consists in man’s choosing to go his own way rather than follow God. Throughout life, man says to God in effect, ‘Leave me alone.’ Hell, the absence of God, [and the absence of love among the people one is with] is God’s simply giving man at last what he has always asked for. It is not God, but man’s own choice that sends man to hell.” (Erickson, Millard, Christian Theology, p. 432).
“Christ is the judge; and yet, from another point of view, it is we who pronounce judgment upon ourselves. If anyone is in hell, it is not because God has imprisoned him there, but because that is where he himself has chosen to be. The lost in hell are self-condemned, self-enslaved; it has rightly been said that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. How can a God of love accept that even a single one of the creatures whom he has made should remain for ever in hell? There is a mystery here which, from our standpoint in this present life, we cannot hope to fathom. The best we can do is to hold in balance two truths, contrasting but not contradictory. First, God has given free will to man, and so to all eternity it lies in man’s power to reject God. Secondly, love signifies compassion, involvement, and so, if there are any who remain eternally in hell, in some sense God is also there with them. It is written in the Psalms, ‘If I go down to hell, thou art there also’ (139:7); and St. Isaac the Syrian says, ‘It is wrong to imagine that sinners in hell are cut off from the love of God.’ Divine love is everywhere, and rejects no one. But we on our side are free to reject divine love; we cannot however, do so without inflicting pain on ourselves, and the more final our rejection the more final our suffering” (Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, pp. 135-136).
I recommend you take some time and chew on that, rather than just dismissing it as propaganda. There's more to Christianity than punishment and being saved from it.
