If God loves us and Jesus died to save us from our sins how can hell exist?

[Migsy1]

There are numerous recounts of visions of hell. I have been reading about the Medjugorje visionaries' recounts of hell. Why would someone choose hell? Why can't they be saved on the day of judgement? I don't understand why a loving God would allow this to happen to anyone. The only explanation I can think of is if that if a person rejects God on judgement day then that person has no soul and can therefore not have eternal life. However this does not explain the sea of fire that a person goes into or torture. Can this be for real?

There's no torture or sea of fire.

If you live happily and normally without god on earth you can choose not to be with God in heaven and that's the same.

Hell just means without God so if you're cracking without him it's just the same.

The way I heard once was this "because God is infinitely just, we should believe that hell exists, but because God is infinitely merciful we don't have to believe that he's put anyone there". Thats with the traditional view of "hell fire and damnation". An alternative way to look at hell is "hell is where God isn't". Thus I can believe that people could choose hell over God, and perhaps for them, there is no life after death?

Hell simply means separation from God.

Personally, I believe that there is a Hell but that it is empty, and that yes people can be saved on the day of judgement. The hell people will nevertheless experience will be the painful realisation of the truth of the full impact of their misdeeds in their life which would necessarily precede such salvation. There will be plenty of those who have spent their lives singing "Shine Jesus Shine" whose pain will be greater than they expected, and some of those who never knew Jesus in their lifetime who have nevertheless lived very unselfishly and whose pain will be less. If you don't consider utterly uncompromising self-knowledge to be painful then you're probably in denial