Why does God Punish people who don't believe?

If God gave us a will to choose, why does He punish people who choose not to believe? This is a very, very difficult question, and we may not have all the answers to this question, but one thing we know is that God is righteous; in Psalms 89:14 it says that righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne; if God were unrighteous, His throne would collapse and God’s kingdom would utterly collapse, but we know from the Word, we know from the Bible, that God is righteous, and we have to stand upon this fact; but also we know that He is not a small man—a small man would force people to do things that they don’t want to do—but our God has a big heart, and God loves man; He wants to give us a choice; when God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, He didn’t force him to choose, rather God gave Adam a choice to either eat of the tree of life or to eat of the knowledge of good and evil; and so today we’re given a choice as well; God does not want to force us to choose what He wants, He wants us to make a choice ourselves, and He wants us to choose God, He wants us to choose the tree of life.