I have been Orthodox all my life, and have lived a good part of my life in an Orthodox country from birth. Christianity and Orthodoxy were considered one and the same thing. Orthodoxy is a way of life and not something you do on Sundays.
It takes an Orthodox mindset to write Three Little Hermits, as narrated by Leo Tolstoy. The message is clear what is true faith and has nothing to do with the Church (for the Church does not give us faith), nor with the Bible (for we must have faith first before the Bible becomes Holy), but has everything to do with God. He is the source and cause of our faith. The rest is human.
As the Orthodox catechism puts it:
"Faith is the path along which God and the human person encounter each other. It is God who makes the first step: He fully and unconditionally believes in the human person and gives him a sign, an awareness of His presence. We hear the mysterious call of God, and our first step towards an encounter with Him is a response to this call. God may call us openly or in secret, overtly or covertly. But it is difficult for us to believe in Him if we do not first heed this call."
Once we convert, nothing earthly really matters, because this is an illusion that will end. This is travel towards a known destination. Do not make it a home. In that mindset, one can easily "not love the world." And nothing wordly takes on or comepetes with God's role in your life. If the Bible is not scientifically accurate or historically exact, or even true, it does not dimnish the message it carries because we believe it, and as one father puts it, faith "is the end of argument": we submit to God ad simply say "Thy will be done" and trust that whatever our judgment is, wherever we end up, in heaven or hell, it will be most mericful and just.
The Cathecism makes it clear that Orthodoxy sees prayer as the key to God.
"The way of negation (apophatic theology) corresponds to the spiritual ascent into the Divine abyss where words fall silent, where reason fades, where all human knowledge and comprehension cease, where God is. It is not by speculative knowledge but in the depths of prayerful silence that the soul can encounter God, Who is ‘beyond everything’ and Who reveals Himself to her as in-comprehensible, in-accessible, in-visible, yet at the same time as living and close to her - as God the Person."
What makes the Bible Holy is the fact that we recognize God's Word in it. It's the message that counts for eveything, that is at the core of that Book and our faith. It matter very little if Job really lived.
Beautifully put. I am amazingly in assent to everything you wrote.