My heart is breaking... I thought Christians are suppose to love "unconditionally"

[*Deidre*]

I happen to believe that God loves everyone without the need for them to accept Christ. But, not everyone believes in God or loves Him. Any relationship will fall short when it's just a one way street...even human ones, as we know. God's love for us doesn't hinge on ours for Him. Just my pov

ETA, My view on Jesus is He came to help mankind, not to dictate to it that if man doesn't follow Jesus, God will stop loving him. His teachings were more to say, you will live a far better life if you do follow Me. Again, it's about a relationship, as I see it. This doesn't mean someone who doesn't follow Jesus won't live a good life, or that God won't love him/her. It only means that Jesus' teachings were to help us not hinder us. God wants a relationship with us, but He won't force that on us. I believe God still loved me when I stopped believing in Him. (I've come to that conclusion, upon returning to faith) This in a nutshell, is the essence of my new found faith.

John 15:5-6 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.   If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

Aside from the overused and much debated John 3:16, with it's "no man cometh to the Father except through Me", how do you explain the blue passage above?  Jesus talked a whole lot about hell, and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth - for whoever did not obey/follow him.  

I take that to mean that God (if god exists, which I'm betting he doesn't) is going to fry me forever for saying that Jesus was an asshole about a lot of things, and wasn't "godlike" at all.  That doesn't sound very loving to me.

I'm not really a Bible scholar, so there are passages that to me, don't fit with Jesus as a loving man who seemed peaceful and not forceful at all in how he approached people. Let me ask you though...why do you have any opinion of Jesus, if you don't believe he existed? When I left Christianity, and eventually identified as an atheist, I was indifferent to the idea of Jesus. I thought maybe he existed at some point in history, but didn't think he was an asshole, etc. Or are you just saying how he is characterized in the Bible, you feel he is depicted as an asshole? Just wondering ....because many Christians believe that atheists 'hate' God, etc...and my thought to that is why would anyone hate something he/she doesn't believe? It's more on an indifference for most atheists, as I once felt anyways.