"Belief" or "Faith" in the spiritual context means "trust." The proper relationship between this and subscribing to certain doctrinal beliefs is simply a matter of accepting what Someone says because they said it, and you trust Them. Thus, if you aren't sure something was said by this Person, subscribing to it out of fear would not be "faith" -- not even close.

Belief, or trust, is something you choose to do. You say that it's not something you can force; but I think that comes from thinking of it as subscribing to doctrines, rather than trusting a Person.

I find it difficult to reconcile the sort of Hell taught by traditional Christianity with God's nature ("God is love"), and I am somewhat comforted knowing that (a) there is informed argument that the Biblical text has been mistranslated, and (b) according to Wikipedia, for the first several hundred years, Christians recognized about six different views of the afterlife, and eternal torment, which was eventually formally adopted by the church as the correct view, was only one of them.