Dear Tom,
Christ is risen!
I am sorry that this is something with which you are struggling. It was difficult for me, as well.
For what it's worth, I think that Father Mark summed it up very well in his first post, and that subsequent posts by others have reiterated this well. God is not an angry God, Who desires to punish us for all eternity. Rather, God is a loving God Who desires to bring us unto Himself, in His love, to share eternally in His energies. The point and purpose of the Christian life is for us, through prayer, ascetic efforts, and participation in the life of Christ's Church, to open ourselves to the grace of God whereby he moulds and shapes us into His purpose for us, to share in his energies of love, life, splendour, holiness, &c. This is what St Peter tells us when he says that we are to share in the divine nature, and St Payl when he says that we shall see "face to face", and know as we are known. This is what theosis is.
Gor brings us all into His presence, to be eternally exposed to His radiant burning love and His energies, but our experience of that presence depends on whether we have striven to conform ourselves to His energies or not.
Holy Scripture seems to support this, as it containthere are numrous examples of how, before Christ had once again opened the gate to our theosis by his Ascension (taking the human nature into the divine nature), man was unable to countenance the holiness of God: (Ex 24:15-17; Ex 33:18-20; Numbers 3:13-15; 1 Chronicles 13:9-10; Matthew 17:1-7). We see this explicitly in the last case, where the traditional icon of the Transfiguration shows the disciples unable to gaze upon the brilliance of the transfigured Christ.
As for your question of whether a temporal decision merits an eternal result, others have asked this question in the past, and there is a brief article on it here. If you'd like to read more, may I suggest Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev's The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian? I don't necessarily agree with St Isaac but I can understand how it is possible to believe in suffering as a temporal state, and part of the process of theosis without buying into catholic Purgatory, with its ideas about paying back some temporal debt of sin as pat of a legalistic transaction.
I hope this is helpful.
In Christ Risen,
Michael
