The Plot of the Bible
God is the ulti

Garden of Eden and the New Jerusalem
There were only two people back then, so of course the setting was a country "garden" setting. Things were very good. There were no dishes or laundry to do. But as those people had descendants then of course the setting would have changed to be more of a city setting, but still very good. We see that the ultimate destination for those who follow the designer is the "New Jerusalem", which is talked about in terms of being the restored Garden of Eden.
Free Choice and a Good Society
The problem is that apparently the best of all possible worlds includes giving humans the ability to have free choice (at least from the human perspective). To give humans free choice includes the likelihood that they will make some bad choices. And over an extremely long period of time it becomes more and more likely that people make bad choices causing a bad society as a result. So, how could God engineer a world that includes both free choice and where people only make good choices? How would you deal with these seeming irreconcilable goals?
The world doesn't work quite right any more
Apparently God's answer was to start out by giving everyone free choice knowing that they would eventually choose badly. Then when bad choices were made (choices that went against what God said was best), God changed the world to no longer work perfectly so that humans would constantly be reminded that we rely on the designer/sustainer for everything in the world around us. If everything worked perfectly, it would be easy to forget that God created

The Problem of Pain
So, the problem of pain comes from two sources: from the bad choices of humanity and from God's changing the world to not work quite right. The good news is that both issues will apparently be resolved in the New Jerusalem.
The Answer is Sacrifice
How does G

The Necessity of Hell
The Bible says that people who choose to follow themselves will be separated out and sent away from those people who are willing to sacrifice themselves to follow God. People assume

It will be a good thing when God separates out those who don't want to follow him from those who do, since they would actually prefer to not be under God's leadership. So, people in Heaven will not need to mourn for those in Hell because, while the people in Hell will strongly desire both the goodness of Heaven and the ability to not follow God's design, if they had to choose between the two they would still choose to not follow God over the long term. That is in stark contrast to those in Heaven who would always choose to follow God, even when His design does not seem to make sense at first. Therefore, as very painful as Hell is, people will be there by their own free choice. There will be no need to mourn for their choice.
So, bad choices by some people are an inevitable result of free choice and to create a New Jerusalem, where only good choices are made, requires a hell to put people who don't want to always choose to follow God's definition of what is "good".
The Point of This Life
So, the point of our existence is to be what God created: people who choose rightly and have a good society. Evil, pain and hell seem to be engineering trade offs that are required in order to have both free choice and a society where people always choose rightly.
Salvation and forgiveness are needed to get us to the place where, somehow, we will ultimately choose rightly forever while still having free choice. By being willing to follow Jesus and give up everything, even to

So, the point of this life is not really salvation in and of itself, though that is a necessary part of this life, but rather the point of this life is preparation for us to live together in a society (the New Jerusalem) as God has designed it. Salvation and forgiveness may be the key to the door, but it is not the house we live in. To understand the plot of the Bible and this life we need to focus on how we were created, why we are here and where we are ultimately going.