Is hell merely the sum total of our poor choices?

In the last post I raised the question of the justice of hell. In short, what could justify punishing a person eternally? One of my readers, MGT2, offers the following reply to this question:

I look at it this way. Two boy scouts, boy A and boy B, both standing before a bonfire with their troop leader. The boys are playing a game of chicken to see who can hold his hand in the flame the longest. The troop leader warns them that the flame is dangerous and the injury from the flame will scar them for life, even cause them to be horribly disabled. He further tells them stop playing the game and no to put their hands or any part of their bodies in the flame because of the risk of an accident.

Boy A heeded the warning, but boy B was full of pride and boasted that he is able to handle himself. Taunting boy A for being a chicken, he reached his arm over the flame, tripped and fell in. Before he could be rescued, he received severe burns over eighty percent of his body, lost sight in one of his eyes, had an arm amputated and was terribly disfigured and physically challenged for the rest of his life, no reprieve.

I am appreciative for the clarity and concision of MGT2's response. The point seems to be this: hell is not excessive because it is the freely chosen actions of certain individuals who seal their own fate. In other words, it is self-imposed: you play with fire, you get burned.

I am sympathetic to this idea. C.S. Lewis, influenced by the great fantasy writer George MacDonald, adopted a similar view in which hell is self-imposed so it would seem MGT2 is in some esteemed company. Even so, there are two fatal problems with MGT2's response.

Why does God allow people to continue to suffer in hell?

To begin with, let's concede that hell is the self-imposed consequences of playing with fire. This may remove an objection to the justice of God, but it still raises critical issues about the love and mercy of God.

Consider it this way: Boy B foolishly has burned himself and now is lying on a hospital bed in unspeakable agony on life support with zero quality of life and no chance of recovery. The only reason Boy B exists now is because the doctors keep his ventilator running. The doctors could allow him to die but they refuse to. When we retort that with no hope of recovery and a horrible quality of life their actions are cruel, would it be any response for them to say: "But he did it to himself?" So what? It is the doctors who are still keeping him alive and that is simply cruel. Allow the poor boy to die.

Likewise, even if hell is purely self-inflicted, the fact remains that God continues every moment to uphold people in existence in hell. He could simply allow them in an instant to lapse out of existence but he instead keeps them suffering in their self-imposed state. If this is what is meant by hell then why isn't God also being cruel?

Why does God punish people in hell?

This brings us to the second, more pivotal point. If we are reading scripture we must admit that hell is not described simply as a self-imposed suffering. It is described as a place of punishment God has prepared for the wicked. (E.g. Mt. 25:46; Jude 1:7) What is more, the teaching is actually that God will resurrect the damned purely so that they may be subjected to punishment (e.g. Dan. 12:2). Thus the picture is very far from Boy B's self-imposed burns. Granted that may be part of the story, but for the analogy to carry we must believe that the burns are also a punishment from God, and that God actually brings the boy back to life so that he may experience these burns as a punishment.

Shouldn't we admit that this appears positively horrifying?