I'll try again to clarify for you the nature of gravity. First, I'll give you some necessary background. Then I'll try to respond to your specific questions and remarks.

Strange as it may seem, there is no such thing as a force of gravity! We used to think that the sun exerts a force on a planet. That's what Newton told us, and Kepler's laws of planetary motion describe the shapes of planetary orbits. That all changed in 1916 when Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity. This involves what are called the "field equations of general relativity", a set of ten tensor equations whose solutions describe distortions in the shape of spacetime caused by the presence of massive bodies such as the sun. Inputs to these equations are positions and states of motion of massive bodies such as the sun. The equations are based on a form of mathematics called "tensor calculus" and are notoriously difficult to derive and to solve for specific cases. Although I'm a physicist, solving them is far beyond my abilty since I've never had anyneed to learn how to solve them. When applied to the sun, they yield solutions that describe the shape of spacetime in the vicinity of the sun. These solutions can be used to derive "geodesics" for specific masses such as planets initially at specific locations and moving in specific directions with specific speeds in this distorted spacetime. The geodesics describe the paths that other bodies will follow in the neighborhood of the mass causing the distortion of spacetime.

Now I'll respond to your specific questions and remarks:

Question: What causes the distortion?
Answer: The presence of mass causes the distortion. If space were empty, that is, contained no mass, it would be "flat", meaning no distortion. Light rays would always follow straight paths. Hopefully, you are aware that one of the three crucial tests of general relativity was the observed bending of light rays as they pass close to the sun during total solar eclipses. This bending is caused by expansion of space itself close to large masses. The same effect casues the "lensing" of distant galaxies that brings into view objects hidden behind those galaxies so that they would otherwise not be visible to us.

Remark: Equations don't distort space-time.
Response: Equations describe warpage of spacetime, It's presence of mass that causes it. I hope the above description made this clear.