I don't think you and I are in disagreement. I did not intend to be rude. I am sorry if it came off that way. I don't see a need to split hairs over who is or is not a "true" Christian. Christianity has existed long before written language. People have been able to find God long before the Bible was conceived. God is celebrated across the world by countless people in countless ways. If the Bible helps you connect to God that is great. And I am not going to tell you that you are not a vegan because you eat meat. I agree words have meaning and the meaning of words is important, but not everything is always black and white. There are multiple kinds of vegans. Whether you knew it or not that is actually a perfect analogy.
"I'd also be careful about establishing what the Bible was written for when we weren't the ones who wrote it." you are saying to the person who is arguing the faith is more than the book. I agree 10,000%. The old testament is also known as the Hebrew Bible because it was written by Jews over the course of hundreds of years as you could probably guess by the fact it contains hundreds of years of actual human history. Twenty seven books were added onto it and it became the new testament. The new testament was written in Greek. St. Mark began writing the new testament about 60 years after the death of Jesus. Who was St. Mark? We don't know. His story was ironically lost to time so we gave him the name of one of Jesus's followers. Same for the other authors of the new testament. St. Paul wrote half of the new testament. Mathew and Luke wrote their portions around 80 years after the death of Jesus. Luke was not a fan of the Jewish people. The Bible as we know it today (kind of) was codified by Bishop Athinazia of Alexandria 300 years after the death of Jesus banning hundreds of scriptures as heresy for not fitting his vision of what he though Christianity and The Bible should be. When I said I was a Christian I meant it.
I never argued God changes. I said the tradition was one of the things I loved about the faith. People change. The way we celebrate our faith changes. The Bible changes. Different denominations have different versions of the Bible. People fight all the time about which Bible is the one correct version. I refuse to be one of them.
As far as I can tell you and I are in agreement. The only difference is that you believe the Bible is important and I believe the teachings of Jesus are important.