This is part of the equation. It isn't all. There are the reasons why God allows people to live. One of the big parts is so that they have time to convert to Christianity and be saved.
Saved from what? From punishment for being the imperfect humans that God created in the first place? Reminds me of torturing doodle bugs by creating a world in a Coke bottle experiment where they were outnumbered by fire ants.
Surely God knows that good can't be discerned without evil, just as light can't be seen without dark as contrast.
But there is something deeper going on here. If any entity creates a system of entropy, then that entity can not control it ALL OF IT, precisely because if there is a top-down controller, then all the entropy is destroyed because it is all deterministic (dependent on external control).
Thus God isn't doing any individualized punishing, sorry. Impossible. Either we exist or we don't and the serendipity (entropy) exists or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways. If God is meddling, then the Universe ceases to exist and he is all alone again. A God could be observing and then do a reset and destroy or reduce the entropy of our Universe to start over. A God could exert partial control, and leave some of the entropy to be free. But by doing this continually over time, the God's preference for certain outcomes would destroy all the entropy just the same and the Universe would just a mirror of God. So what was the point of such a game? The God is alone all again with an exact copy of himself.
Even if our soul was moved outside this Universe upon death, then it could not have any communication channel to this Universe, otherwise the entropy of this Universe would collapse. So what is the point if we have no connection to the being we were here in this Universe?
Sorry top-down systems don't sustain (and God must be eternal right?). They are temporary or partial Coasian barriers, lest existence doesn't exist.
My blog essays "The Universe" and "Information Is Alive!" provide more background.
The answer to this isn't something that can easily be said in a handful of words. But "saved" is saved from our own self-destruction.
Possibly the top, major purpose that God made people for is to glorify Him. God made people with enough of Himself in them so that they could recognize His greatness, and praise and honor Him for that greatness... thanking Him for creating them.
One rule; one law; one order; don't eat the one fruit. Eat all the rest. Don't eat that one. Honor God by obeying that one rule. After all, honoring God, and thereby glorifying Him, is what man was created for.
People couldn't leave well enough alone back then, and they haven't ever since.
The result is entropy. There was no entropy before that. Man brought the entropy.
The universe is ONE. It all hangs together as one unit. The disobedience of man created the entropy that covers the whole universe.
God had a choice back there in the Beginning. Lose the glorification; lose humankind; or don't lose. God chose not to lose. He did it by promising a Savior, Who came in the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Now, God won't lose. The people who follow Him and believe in Him will be saved for everlasting life. There is glory for God in this, because these people will forever praise Him EXTRA because He didn't have to save them, yet did save them... from their own self-destruction.
The people who don't follow God, and proceed onward to their self-destruction, can only praise and glorify God, because they were given the chance, and used their own choice to reject Him. God was fair beyond beyond. He is glorified by those who are destroyed because they used their own choice which God gave them, and so they glorify Him.
What does it mean to be destroyed? What is this destruction that we need saving from?
God can exist outside of time and eternity. We cannot do so without Him. Our spirits are connected to eternity in such a way that their destruction, their dissolution (if it that's the route we take), will take forever. Will it be pleasant, our personal dissolution forever? Absolutely not! The forge fires of Hell, whereby God gets His power back from all those who do not turn from their own self-destruction, are something that will go on throughout eternity, because that is what the soul of man is... something eternal.
You want it? You get it! But it is your choice, even your opportunity. This is the way it is. Take your pick.
