Why would a loving God send people to Hell?

[JayhawkSD]

14. My position has always been that man sends himself to Hell.

God would never and has never done that, welcomes everyone into His/Her presence. I heard someone define Hell once as "the absence of God." Sounds right to me. Man consigns himself to hell, but not "by his actions or inactions." He simply is in hell because he is too focused on himself to be aware of God. He has "tuned God out" in hedonistic pursuits. So man didn't "put himself in hell" so much as he fell short of putting himself into the heaven that was available to him.

I have sort of the same perception as to the various "rules" that religions have. If your kid breaks a rule, do you stop loving that kid and throw them out? Of course not.

I have the idea that God is offering guidance and direction all the time, under any circumstance, and that all I have to do is listen. I have to be able to hear, and I cannot hear if I'm not listening. If I am focused on myself, if my attention is turned inward, then I am not listening.

If you think about all of these "rules" you can see that they are not so much about "right and wrong," so much as they are about making me turn my attention away from self, outward toward others and toward the world around me. To make me less concerned about "what's in it for me" and more concerned about how, as the Navaho puts it, "I can be in harmony with life." In such a state of being I can hear the guidance and direction which is always being offered.