Many modern interpretations of Hell in media and in most Christian churches have it as an eternal damnation into a burning lake of fire. My points to refute this are simple and few; 1. Revelation was a metaphor, code used by early Christians to explain the fall of the Roman Empire and what they were going through. Even so, the “eternal lake of fire” is only said to contain the devil, the beast, and the false prophet after the war on Christ’s earthly Kingdom. All the nations that followed them to war were said to be consumed by fire from the heavens. 2. Jesus described Hell in metaphor as a place where trash is burned, and the collecting of people to burn like the harvesting of weeds among good crops. Burning by its nature reduces something to ash until there is no more fuel. Jesus does not say we are eternal, and repeatedly described how not following Him in different terms was death; only our new spirit (and with a stretch, new spiritual bodies) in Christ would be eternal with God, all of which go to Heaven because they follow Christ.
3. Before Christ, in texts that he would’ve studied before ministry and demonstrated his knowledge of during the New Testament, the underworld was primarily described as Sheol, the underworld wherein people metaphorically sleep (literally remain dead) until the just who reside in “Abraham’s Bosom” were awoken and taken up into Heaven, and until all who ‘sleep’ are waiting until they are awoken at the end of time to be finally judged.
Thus, Hell is simply eternal death, where the soul is put to rest forever and the body is returned to the dust it was made from; the literal opposite of Heaven, which is then eternal existence in and with God, Christ, and all others who chose Him. The ultimate good to make up for suffering which can just as easily drive one towards death. This is why almost all popular stories in the Bible are about those who endure suffering and choose to continue loving life and God, even if only in the beginning and end of their lives.
This is internally consistent with both a just and merciful god who is supposed to be love and life, tri-Omni but offering “free choice.” Everlasting punishment cannot be deserved from limited misdeeds due to their inherent nature, but if the “choice” is between dying forever without God and living forever with God based on your individual beliefs, then a choice it really is.
More personally, it also makes sense then: if life was God giving each new soul a chance to understand love as a concept in entirety and experience life as an experience entirely, given we supposedly inherited the knowledge of good and evil and are like Him (a fair product of circumstance from Him making a being in His image with the opportunity to be like Him), to then choose if we prefer existence or nonexistence, if we have suffered too much or if we have been loved and can give enough love. But that’s personal logic based solely on my understanding troubleshooting an opinion.
In this way, Hell as a “punishment” and also a “choice” is then internally consistent with Heaven and a “loving” God if it is just the eternal End without being, as they would say, awoken again.