I understand your perspective, as I was a Prot for 20+ years and held the same opinion.
A couple really helpful books for me that provided insight into the history of the church and how it relates to Protestantism were “Becoming Orthodox” and “Rock and Sand”
Both written by ex-Protestants that found their way back to Christ’s Church.
If you are able to, I would recommend reading these books. One of them you can get as a free ebook here:
https://store.ancientfaith.com/becoming-orthodox-ebook-special-offer/
Becoming Orthodox was written by Peter Gillquist, who was a part of campus crusades decades ago and eventually with a group of others decided to create a church that matched the historical church as much as possible, and unintentionally created an Evangelical Orthodox Church.
It’s an amazing story, highly recommend checking it out.
May God bless you, sir 🙏