How Can Destruction Show Love?

Sunday's lesson is about Abraham's love for Lot and God's love for everyone, but it includes an event that doesn't necessarily seem terribly loving: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The lesson manual prompts the teacher to ask how the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah shows God's love for His children, with the given answer being that "He destroyed the wicked to protect the righteous from their evil influence," but that's only half of the answer. I want to know how the destruction of those cities showed God's love for those whom He destroyed. Surely, He loved them, too, right?

My answer to this puzzle is that God didn't want the Sodomites and Gomorrahites digging themselves any deeper into the pit they were digging themselves into. They were sinning terribly, with no hope of repenting in this life. By destroying them, God could move them into the Spirit World, where, with a little bit of Eternal Perspective, they might have become willing to repent. At that point, they might be grateful that God stopped them from continuing in sin for the rest of their natural lives. The sooner God stopped them, the fewer sins they'd have to repent of and the sooner they could get to a position in which they would be willing to repent.

Perhaps God's love for those Sodomites and Gomorrahites was shown in their destruction by protecting them from themselves. Or maybe God's love for them was overwhelmed  by His love for others, and He destroyed them mainly to protect the rest of the world from them. Either way, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was one of the rare cases where violence was the most loving possible response.

In the world today, people turn to violence far too quickly, and for much baser motivations than love, but even when one live whole-heartedly by the principle of love, violence is still sometimes the best response. It's certainly not the best response in most cases, and I strongly discourage resorting to violence in most cases, but there are some rare cases in which even God Himself would use violence, though I'm confident that He would only even do so out of love.