Thanks for taking the time to respond. Although I don't read the Bible every day like I did as a young person, I feel like I have a lot of it internalized. Especially since my father was guy giving the weekly sermons.
When I went to visit my dad for his 80th birthday, we went to church. I also saw my brother and his family, who are all as religious as I used to be. It felt weird to me to step into a different world where people are talking about and thinking about God a lot.
You said that the Bible is a big book that says many things, all reecorded by many different people over many centuries. It is so big that people can and have always been able to pick and choose to see themselves in it, no matter what they look like. This is usually good, but could be harmful -- like when certain Bible passages were used to justify slavery.
Anyway, I don't know if there is a single God, multiple gods, or God is in everything everywhere. I tend to lean towards the third choice. I have had enough experience to think that there is more to existence than just what we see. There is something like magic. My Ojibwe friend talks about "the creator" and how each plant and animal and rock has a sentience beyond the day-to-day. We humans need to respect and value that spiritual existence and live as if it were real. Likewise, if each of us is "everlasting" then it means we are treasures beyond numbering.
If God is everywhere and in everything, then a life of compassion and love and reciprocity is warranted. One of the (probably unintended) consequences of Christianity was to remove God from the world and put him in church. The big difference between monotheism and all the local religions it replaced was that it declared itself the only way and its priests as the only avenue to the only way. In this sense it was a religion perfectly suited for Emperor Constantine to adopt as the state religion of Rome. And when they chose which books Christ to put in the Christian Bible, it was Roman bishops who decided to exclude Thomas - where God was everywhere, in all of us (that was too revolutionary).
If you have the time, I recommend Jack Nelson Pallmeier's book, Jesus Against Christianity. You would like it. Jack rescues Jesus from the Christians who would use him for their purposes (as Vance and others seem to be doing).
