

Good parents, loving parents, give their children reasons to love them that don't involve not carrying out threats to hurt their children. We'd call that mother coercive and manipulative at best, and a loathsome sadist at worse—and, again, we'd probably call Child Protective Services. If a little boy's love for his mother was based on the fact that she had threatened to beat the living snot out of him if he didn't love her enough and believe certain things about her, but he'd loved her enough believed certain things about her and she thus didn't beat the living snot out of him, we wouldn't call that little boy's love an authentic love.

The "eternal conscious torture" of Hell is no disciplinary process. Discipline, sure—but only with the mind of making the child better. Good parents, loving parents, do not torture their children. If a father tortured his daughter (or handed his daughter over to someone else for the purpose of their being tortured) because she had disobeyed her father—and particularly if she had disobeyed out of ignorance—there is no possible justification we'd accept for that father calling him- or herself a "good father." We'd call Child Protective Services to take that little girl away. Much of the evangelical portrayal of God runs counter to these metaphors. God continually compares God's relationship with us to our most essential and archetypal relationships with one another—God is the best possible parent to us, God's children, or God is the best possible spouse to us, God's beloved. I don't think that gets him off the hook there, simply presenting God as completely inconceivable (which is true in a broad sense) God continually talks about God's character throughout the Bible, and God's character is presented as consistent. He then challenges those who would disown a God who would not make the same choices they would.
