Truth idolatry leads to superstition, and superstition closes the door to Grace.
The story of Job is the Biblical warning for truth idolatry. Satan, standing before God, claimed that the faithful and pious are this way because it benefits them. God and Satan thus make a bet that Job, an apparently good and pious person, would forfeit his faith as soon as his wonderful life is undone. Yet, to his credit, Job endures. Later, Job asks God why he has been made to suffer –
(Book of) Job – VIII. THE LORD AND JOB MEET
1- Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 – Who is this who darkens counsel with words of ignorance?
3 – Gird up your loins* now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers!
4 – Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
[and the schooling continues …] Job – Old Testament
“Tell me, if you have understanding.”
But Job cannot. The expansiveness of God’s truth cannot be known (claimed)—EVER (“Where were you when I founded the earth?”)—by anyone. Job’s piousness arose with his faith, based upon “truths” confidently and devoutly believed by him. Here, however, and through Job’s many tribulations, God established that Job really knows, in effect, nothing at all. God thus demonstrated that Job’s respect for ‘Job’s understanding’ of God’s truth (piousness) is not, in fact, true faith.
Most Biblical scholars use Job to explain suffering: “Suffering may sometimes be allowed in our lives to purify, test, teach, or strengthen the soul.”1 But God didn’t tell Job he could do better; instead, he said that Job could NEVER fully know why God does what God does. Moreover, believing he “KNEW” (i.e., rote/blind/ignorant piousness), Job could not also enjoy God’s Grace (his unmerited favor). God does not want Job to ‘learn’ a thing; God wants Job to retain a curious (into God’s will) and humble (open to) mind so that new ideas are not taught but, instead, are actively explored by Job. Understanding and wisdom are only developed (but never completed) this way.
Job made his acts of piousness truths and transactional. Job believed that these truths would grant him favor with God and insulate him from suffering. Yet, this is reason/Grace killing truth idolatry and, thereby, a violation of the First Commandment.
The First Commandment is recorded in Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Idolatry, in Judaism and Christianity, the worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments prohibits idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Britannica
This is consistent with finding truth and especially the process of reason. For the pursuit of the sufficient condition, it is not possible to claim absolute truth. There is always the UNKNOWN hypothesis (absolute or God’s truth).
(The Book of) Job should have been the preface to the Bible (Old Testament) to discourage Biblical truth idolatry2.
The idol’s creator thus becomes the victim of his own creation, which assumes power over him. Idolatry is sinful, then, not because it violates an arbitrary rule but because it transforms an individual made in the image of God into the image of a lifeless idol that is itself the work of human hands.
What’s So Bad About Idolatry?
In emotional immaturity, we are cognitive prisoners of those around us through their immediate and direct programming, in fractious competition with our primal drives. We are born ‘fallen.’
After ‘free will’ is acquired (emotional maturity), and while truth-idolatry is nevertheless tolerated, we remain cognitive trustees of those who came before us. Yet, we come to see and accept that the self is fallen.’ This is the first crucial step towards SELF-awareness.
Finally, with emotional maturity, but only if truth idolatry is rejected, humans may develop a free mind by their own “hands” by simultaneously acknowledging the necessary moral facilitation of absolute truth, or, as some would say, God’s truth (i.e., God’s “hands”). Here, to pursue absolute truth, false is eliminated. This is Grace.
