THE BIG PICTURE IS FAITH INEVITABLE, OR CAN IT ELUDE US? THE PLAN HOLDS UP UNDER QUESTIONING.

Byline: Michael Gotlieb

UNMITIGATED faith is the hallmark of a religious fanatic. No one knows for certain why God created us. No one ultimately knows what God wants from us.

The Bible is filled with stories about the Israelites who, at every turn of the page, question God's motives as they travel through the desert in pursuit of Promised Land. Indeed, many of the great biblical prophets anguished over their faith. To this day, God's veracity, or more importantly, God's relevance is debated. No wonder some have labeled God the most tragic figure in the Bible.

But healthy skepticism has always been the hallmark of a serious, faith-oriented soul. There are times in everyone's life when God's methods and existence are understandably questioned. To a believer, faith is not so much a personal declaration as it is an ongoing process.

On occasion, my own belief quotient fluctuates. As a pulpit rabbi, I have attended too many funerals and have stood by the bedside of too many terminally ill people, to have an unswerving faith in the creator of the universe. Having said that, I find the arguments for God's existence far more compelling than any argument to the contrary. Two important factors have convinced me of this. The first deals with meaning in life.

Doing away with the notion of God renders life ultimately meaningless. We are born, we live and, at a given point, we die. Beyond that, whatever meaning given to life is purely existential. In other words, meaning is reduced solely to one's subjective experiences. Without God, there is no attentive force driving the universe. Life becomes nothing more than the outgrowth of a mixing of infinite time and space. Nothing more than an arbitrary grouping of molecules. Without God, all that is felt and experienced, all these things, is the sole invention of the mind.

The second factor that helps sustain my faith concerns morality. Without God, ultimate morality ceases to exist. Like meaning in life, good and evil become purely subjective concepts. Morality is a system of ethics that, by definition, transcends personal opinion and majority rule. In its purest form, it is objective. But when right and wrong are nothing more than personal opinion, no single standard of morality prevails. Because of God, good and evil are not mere outgrowths of cultural differences. Because of God, something is good or evil, regardless of one's environment or geography.

Given a soul-searching, balanced faith, everything becomes more precious - meaning in life, morality, even, ironically, natural human suffering. We certainly do not know why God allows for natural suffering. It is one of the most poignant arguments against belief in a benevolent creator. But pain and loss do not disprove God's existence any more than happiness and joy proves it.

So much in life is viewed as a balance sheet. Decisions are weighed according to their merit, their feasibility. After all is said, faith is too complex and the human spirit too sophisticated to offer simple sound bytes in its defense.

But on my balance sheet of life, I have come to the clear-headed conclusion that belief in God is rational and necessary, enriching and powerfully challenging.

Admittedly, there are only arguments of God's existence, there are no proofs.

``In the final analysis,'' writes Israel Meir Kagan, a 19th century rabbi, ``for the believer there are no questions, and for the nonbeliever there are no answers.'' No questions and no answers, that is, so long as both the believer and nonbeliever hold to their respective positions in an unmitigated way.

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Photo: (color) no caption (stained glass window with religious theme)