the notion that god is love and loves all of their creations completely falls apart with the very existence of hell, at least in terms of it being a plane of eternal punishment thrust upon beings for exercising free will under the conditions they were given.

i think that hell is temporary, whether it is a place you go after death to atone for your sins or it is our very existence that we can only move on from entirely after we die.

the latter could have a potential partnership with the theory of reincarnation, where we are doomed to continue each of our own hells from a fresh slate until we finally reach a point of spiritual ascension.

i personally do not believe that God would do such a thing as to create a hell and create beings knowing full well they would end up there eternally, just to dissuade other beings from disobeying, even though we were given free will.

barring all of it just being made up, i think it is far more likely that God created us for some purpose (of which i do not know, it could be any number of things), and in order to achieve that purpose our souls all need to have a mortal body and they all need to go through some sort of hardship to put into perspective all facets of existence. insomuch to the point that even God Himself, in some fashion, had to go through the exact same process. i think it is very possible that our souls are simply the next generation of godhood. a lot of other religions (many now called "mythologies") have had this kind of idea where gods had parents and children who were also gods (or very powerful beings) and that even humans could ascend to this status as well.