"Love me or go to hell"

When I was a kid, I had a "friend" who owned an Atari game thing.  He was the only one on our block that had it, and we had to basically pretend to like him in order to get a "turn" on his Atari.  He would usually make us play floor hockey for a while before letting us play it, and largely hog it anyway, and I'm sure he knew no one really actually liked him.

What would you think of a person that said "unless you love me with all your heart, mind, and 'soul', I will set you on fire, then put you out just before you died, then when you were healed up enough I would set you on fire again, and keep doing that as long as I could."  I mean, the person might be an aquaintance, you might be indifferent to them, have a slight dislike of them, or possibly even hate them.   God, in the bible, demands total, complete denial of "self" and an impossible amount of commitment to him.  So much commitment and adoration that you actually end up needing his help to give it to him.  And you either do that, or suffer unimaginable torment being burned and burned for eternity, as long as God can possibly burn you.

Christians always say that seperation of god=hell, but I think god could have made a more pleasant place for his enemies/strangers/wrong religion types and still been "just", in fact, that would actually make him "just". Hell isnt justice at all. Hitler maybe deserves 400000000 years in hell, but no one human truly deserves eternity there.

This might be a step closer to "just":

God: "hey dude, you dont like me, I see that.  You read the bible, and you didn't like what you saw.  You have free will, and you can go live here in this relatively nice place for eternity.  Its as good as heaven for the most part, just doesnt have me around.  Just stay away from me, OK?"
You: "um...ok God.  What if I get bored and I want to come visit"
God: "aww ok.  you can visit some times.  In fact, I would like that"
You: "Cool."

But, the bible instead plays out the psychotic scenario of this:

God: "Love me, worship at my feet, adore me, sing my praises with all your heart, mind, and soul forever!"
You: "Um...seems kind of petty, plus its really hard to believe you even exist given the 'faith' required as you are largely invisible and only appear as a 'still small voice' in my head that could easily be mistaken for the other voices in my head."
God: "Too bad. You had your chance and now you will burn for eternity!"
You: "crackle crackle crackle" (which, is a bit of a shock, since you're not quite dead)

 So you see?  Christianity is really based on a very ridiculous premise.  There is only fear, you cant love someone you fear or has you threatened.  You might THINK you love them, but its more like stockholm syndrome.  You are so afraid of not "loving them properly" and ending up burning for eternity, that you dont really bother to find out exactly what this person is like and what they have done to deserve your love.   "but he died on the cross for us" ... not really. I didnt ask him to die, I wasnt in the garden of eden, I didnt make up the entire scenario.  I didnt put the "tree of knowledge" in the garden , this all happened thousands of years before I was born.  God did it all for himself, its a sick, twisted pageant he is the author of and we are supposed to love him for the way it comes out in the end?  Well, this all makes it so clear to me that its not God, in fact, its a story that resembles the greedy, petty, violent desires of evil men throughout the ages who have justified war, rape, pillaging, and an overt paternalistic society that abuses women.   They seem vastly more likely to be the true authors and not the same "creator" of butterflies, stars, and roses.

Final point.  You can't truly love someone unless there is no consequence to not loving them.  Only if both parties are free to walk away at any time from the relationship with zero consequences can you know for certain you have pure, true love.   So in truth, its really impossible for anyone to truly love God as long as the threat of hell exists.  In fact, if christians instead knew that sticking with God meant they would actually end up in hell for eternity, while all the non-believers went to heaven instead, then you'd really know they were completely and utterly in love with God.

What greater love has a person than this, that they would suffer eternal torment in hell to be with them?