The New Testament and even some parts of the Old Testament do teach that there will indeed be hell to pay for those who do not make things right with God. The unexpected part, for those who are unwilling to examine what the Bible actually says without biases and other assumptions, is that hell is not the permanent home of the unsaved--they will not exist eternally as those who have received eternal life will [1]. Upon learning of this idea, evangelicals tend to eventually come to the erroneous conclusion that the cosmic death of the wicked is something so trivial that it must be false because it does not take sin seriously. Out of the many errors and philosophical hypocrisies that evangelicals will reach for, one that is relevant to this trivialization of death is the fact that they do not really think death is trivial. They pretend like murder is the worst thing one could do to another person and treat death in a general sense as a tragedy.
What of those who are terrified of the thought of not existing forever? If an evangelical feels terror at the hypothetical thought of atheism being true, conflates the nonexistence of God with the nonexistence of an afterlife (atheism would not actually mean there is no afterlife, since God and an afterlife are not at all the same thing, but that can be saved for another time), and then finds comfort in the idea of the Biblical heaven because it entails their eternal existence, he or she would be a hypocrite to turn around and pretend like annihilation of the soul and body would be a trivial fate. They fear nonexistence in one context but think it too minor in another! If permanent death with no opportunity for restoration is a grave outcome on certain kinds of atheism, then it is a grave outcome on any kind of theism that is compatible with it. Death is no small thing.
If evangelicals truly, consistently thought that eternal death was a trivial response to sin, they would not think nothing of the loss of all the possible joys, triumphs, and pleasures of life. Having no ability to dwell on and delight in the pleasures of absolute certainties of logical truths, having no ability to savor relationships with other humans, animals, or God, having no ability to explore one's own mind and be connected with oneself, and having no ability to even long for a better life or strive to improve one's circumstances is a major loss. Again, that the Bible teaches the doctrine of annihilationism does not mean that there will not be hell to pay if the Bible is true.
The payment for human sin is one's very life (Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:4, and so on). How ironic it is that evangelicals admit that Paul so clearly calls the wages of sin death, and still they still pretend like the fate of every single unsaved being is eternal torment, the very thing that is the opposite of death! Since life is permanently and wholly extinguished in response to sin, the very nature of sin is that in doing something that is evil, a person forfeits their right to coexist with God forever when they knowingly or unknowingly violate their moral obligations. Part of the tragedy of sin and the justice of the truly Biblical hell is that the unsaved, with one subset of possible exceptions [2], are lost forever. It is a deserved fate if Christianity is true, but even within the Christian ideological framework, it is something bittersweet.
The eternal life Genesis teaches was intended for humanity is restored through commitment to Christ. Otherwise, life itself is at stake. This is what hell is intended to claim from humans: the unsaved are said to die and undergo resurrection for the second death, which is the most existentially serious kind of death, after a potentially long period of suffering before being cut off from existence. There is certainly hell to pay even according to the annihilationism evangelicals dismiss as not taking sin seriously. In fact, it is precisely because injustice is sin and permanently killing sinners is what God has revealed as just that this popular myth cannot be true within Biblical theology. Annihilationism takes sin exactly as seriously as it deserves to be taken--what it does not do is misrepresent what the Bible says sin deserves one way or another. Neither lenience nor unjustly harsh punishment is part of the Biblical hell.
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