Sherman,
I completely share your response and agree that the traditional evangelical use of ‘hell’ has meant that judgment is not taken as seriously as universalists can be inclined to take it. You’re right that in addition to communicating that believers have received an exemption from judgment and the serious consequences of their choices, and thus can ignore judgment, it also means that non-Christians who may worry about painful realities facing them just ignore talking with us about God’s judgment because we who specialize in talk of it promote such an offensively narrow and unjust conception of it.
A corollary is that we live amid world views that in effect recognize Paul’s reap and sow principle, and Jesus’ exhortation that what we cast on the waters is apt to come back to us, because they sense there is some sobering law of cause and effect at work in the choices we make. But we are not apt to have the privilege of comparing notes concerning judgment and Jesus’ approach to what matters and what the solution is, because our version is so self-servingly parochial and abhorrent.
So the Calvs see, and the Arminis see, that people go to their graves cursing God and they say, “How can such a person be saved?” If the death deadline is assumed (and it is), then there doesn’t seem to be any other option. For Calvs, as has been said, it’s pretty straight-forward once the deadline has been discredited. The set of unregenerate/reprobate is empty, because God in Christ emptied it – as it is His stated will that all men repent and believe the gospel.