I find the metaphor described in CS Lewis’ ``The Great Divorce’’ to be the most rational understanding of all of this.

He convincingly shows that wicked action in our present world leads towards a world view that is full of self inflicted pain. He argues that heaven and hell are the natural consequences of this effect taken to its extreme. In the end, those in hell cannot recognize or stand anything good. They are not locked in Hell, they are running from heaven.

It is still a brutal picture, but it is a brutal picture driven by free will… and in his story several characters are kind of in the middle when they die and even after death are still making choices that are moving them one direction or another.

Still it does show things as unstable, you will eventually slide permanently to one side or another… So it is still a brutal picture, but one that follows from having free will. Each has a right to damn or save.