How Do We Feel When Someone We Love Dies Without Christ?

We Christians believe in the existence of hell because Jesus believed in it, not because we like it. Since he's the Son of God, we're obligated to take his word on it.
The reason a hell even exists is because God is sovereign and holy, and people are evil. If people weren't evil, then hell wouldn't bother anybody. After all, who cares if the devil gets thrown into hell one day? He's a fiend, and we all figure he deserves to be there. But human souls that are, like the devil, in rebellion against God's authority, and are marinated in their sins, have no place in His heavenly home. God would no more allow such a person into heaven, than you would allow a cobra to slither in your door. We worry about tracking mud onto the carpet. God's not going to allow His house to be defiled.

We don't like to think of our loved ones as snak or defilers. That's because we're bound to them by the bonds of affection, and because we've become dull to their sins. We're also ignorant of most of their sins. And we've got so much latent snakiness inside us, that we look at someone else's snakiness and say, I don't get it, what's the big deal? But God never gets "used to" snakiness. God is just as upset by sin today as He was when Adam first bit the fruit.

God in the Bible describes himself as impartial. He doesn't slide the scales of justice based on liking one person better than another. God isn't a citizen of any nation, and he doesn't belong to any ethnic group, so He doesn't favor one country over another, or one race over another. We, however, definitely are not impartial. We say, "But that person is my (best friend, parent, offspring)...!" God says, "That person is a soul who for refuge to Jesus did not flee, so now I must and shall evaluate him/her according to my law."

I think there is a deep seriousness and sobriety that a Christian must feel at the passing of a non-Christian loved one, that we mix in with our sadness. It counterbalances the sad part. God's judgment against sin is not an unexplainable tragedy that peculiarly befalls people from down out of the sky. It's not like leukemia, or tumbling down a flight of stairs. Every person is born into this world that blares the presence of God at them from the first moment they open their eyes. The beauty of the skies, the mountains, and the seas shout the glory of God. The voice of moral conscience speaks truth inwardly to the soul. Even our outrage at the victimization of evil, committed against us or against others, speaks to us of a great Law-giver. Practical evidences of the providence of God happen all around us. Prayers get answered. Food arrives on the table. Sick people get well. Someone loves you.

By the time a person passes from this world into the next, they have experienced a graduate school course on The Existence & Glory of God 101. It's impossible for the departed person to plead ignorance of the glory of God. If they were atheists in this life, it's because they wanted to be.

In the end, we are on the Lord's side. That's what it comes down to. I have chosen the Lord's side. You have chosen to devote your life to fighting my Savior. You have chosen to be God's enemy, so, when the last day comes, that means you are my enemy, even though I love you. Christ drew a line in the sand. You're either for me or against me, he said. Christ said that he came with a sword, to divide families against each other. Whose side are you on? When the children of Israel were rioting, Moses cried out, who is on the Lord's side? The Levites responded, "We are!", and began slaying their cousins with the sword, in order to restore order. Christ in the gospel says, "Who is on my side?", again and again, and again and again over the centuries we take sides.

I don't want you to go into final judgment. I've prayed and worked, even wept, that you would repent. But nobody forced you to sin, not even once were you forced; and nobody forced you to live your life defying God in the particular way you did it. I am not your judge, and for that I thank God. You answer to Someone a million times higher than I. You may be my father, my mother, my sister, my brother, or my child, but I defer the handling of your case to the Lord, who is the only one who can be trusted to do the right thing by you. God is no sadist. He orchestrated the murder of his own Son for you, so that you could be offered redemption. The suffering in your life that you blamed on God, would have been healed by God, if you had brought them to Him, but you refused. Instead, you used them as another excuse to live how you please. I've chosen my side. When the final judgment day comes, I won't feel any divided loyalties. I won't be happy for your judgment, but I won't be un-happy with my Lord, either. I recognize that you are individual living life in the sight of the God who made you for Himself, and I know that, in the end, you will have to stand before God as you, with me standing by and watching from the sidelines.