Eternity, punishment, and what the hell Jesus has to do with all of it.
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Awesome talk! Well thought out.
The claim that the eternal fiery torture of Dante is predominantly a white evangelical thing is really off base.
There seems to be this sort of myth/tendency to incorrectly associate wrong theological views with whiteness when they are far more widespread than that. This is an example.
First of all, no matter what those in Orthodox churches say, they share many of the same saints as the Roman Catholic Church who taught vivid, Dante-like fiery hell long before Dante (e.g. John Chrysostom, Hippolytus of Rome, Cyprian of Carthage). ). Ask someone who is Orthodox for any actual ancient examples of those who adopt their now-widespread view of hell, and you will get crickets. you will get examples of fathers who believed some aspects of it, but never the actual view itself.
Along those lines, if you look at the writings of various early and medieval church figures, if they affirmed eternal conscious hell at all, it was fire, pain, God's active vengeance, etc. Not always as elaborate as Dante's work (which was fiction), but very gruesome nonetheless. The views that fundamentally depart from Dante will typically be found after the Reformation (notwithstanding universalists and annihilationists at various points prior to that).
If anything, it is probably white evangelicals now, more than anyone else, who depart from Dante and the many teachers throughout church history who held a fiery hell of torture. That's what you get out of CS Lewis and Tim Keller and white American apologists. They are the ones who push the view that hell is really about separation from God, no active torture, no fire, etc. We aren't getting this from evangelicals or Catholics or other conservative Christians from Africa and Asia (who tend to be more conservative and fire-and-brimstone than their western counterparts).
When I think of a Place that's separated from God & left to our own free will, choices & assumptions, I couldn't think of a worst place. God Blesses All those current living, whether You have faith or not, through the beauty of nature, your domesticated pets, a sunrise, a sunset, family, community, I could go on & provides us the option to always have a choice, whether we acknowledge that fact or not…. but imagine if those Blessings, choices & options are no longer available to You, because You have chosen to be separated from a Loving God… The torment would be unbearable… No more Blessings, no more choice, no more options, no more family, no more communities…. Just You😢😢😢