We can only get a glimpse of Divine love by experiencing human love. We may be lucky enough to experience the love for and of a parent, the love for and of a child, the love for and of a close freind. With that as our baseline -- the dreaded 'lived experience' -- we are told that Diving love is way beyond the very best of our experience.
Similarly Divine mercy and justice are beyond our understanding.
Contemporary audiences would have been horrified by story of the Prodigal Son because what the son did to the father (essentially wished he was dead) and what the father did to the son (forgived his son to the point of social scandal) were outside the bounds of what was expected of 'mercy' and 'judgement'.
In short we can't limit the love and mercy of God with our own experience and understanding ... it's beyond us.
So, I simply can't reconcile that with a God who allows 'eternal' punishment for even a life-time of misdeeds. The punishment doesn't even fit the crime in human terms.
Faith tells me that God is just, but that justice is underpinned by 'beyond' love.
The idea that God would cut that choice we have been freely given -- to turn toward God in love -- at the arbitrary time of our death seems to be more human than divine.
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