Fear Of Death

Fear is a subjective thing: what one person fears may be welcomed or dismissed by another, and the experience of fear is unique to each individual.  There may be some things that entire groups of people happen to fear, just as there may be some things that objectively deserve fear, but any experience is subjective with respect to the consciousness of the one experiencing it.  The subjectivity of emotional reactions renders emotion irrelevant to matters of theological truth and falsity, and thus emotion has no authority to determine what the Bible teaches about the fate of the wicked.

It does not matter if annihilationism offends some people; it does not matter if the thought of temporary or eternal death does not bother some people.  None of these things affects the fact that the Bible plainly and consistently teaches that the human soul is not able to live forever on its own and that destruction of soul and body awaits the unsaved.  If someone is unwilling to consider annihilation a serious punishment for sin, the error does not rest in the doctrine of annihilationism, but it instead rests in their own desire to only carry out their Biblical moral obligations if they anticipate hell to involve perpetual torment.

Evangelicals (with perhaps a minority being the exceptions) sometimes dismiss the idea of permanent death of the mind and body as if it could not possibly be terrifying, despite eternal death excluding the pleasures and joys of eternal life--an outcome that any sincere and intelligent Christian would not take lightly.  Anything short of endless torment is regarded by the evangelical world as too minor to warrant existential fear.  They might even treat this supposed lack of terror as if it would invalidate the whole of the gospel if annihilationism and conditional immortality were Biblically correct.

However, the actions of almost every person, evangelicals included, suggests that they do not genuinely believe this.  If death is too trivial a thing for many people to be frightened by it, then it is quite common for people to live as if they think the opposite.  One can frequently see people choose some course of action because they think it will postpone their deaths, and the desire to prolong life can manifest itself in everything from the avoidance of perceived danger to the pursuit of health.

Certainly, the fear of death is not the only reason someone might or should seek eternal life [1].  Nevertheless, fear of the second death is a deserved response to the nature of the Biblical hell--not deserved in the sense that someone sins if they are not subjectively afraid of hell, but deserved in the sense that fear is not an unwarranted response to the second death (Matthew 10:28).  The death of one's consciousness is no minor thing.  Likewise, permanent forfeiture of eternal life is nothing to scoff at.  It follows that there is nothing Biblically trivial about fearing the irrevocable loss of consciousness predicted for the unsaved.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/03/persistent-commitment-to-god.html