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Summary of Question:	Ginetic Diseses
Category:	General Sikhism
Date Posted:	Sunday, 5/26/2002 11:31 AM MDT

Sat Shri akaal,

I have a question i would like to ask the because i am going out of my mind for the past 4 years arguing with myself internally and slowly losing all faith in the almighty god. I will give you an insight in to my family life, we are a very gursikh family with the majority of the family amritshaka. Only the childeren 9 of us and 2 uncles and 1 aunty have not taken amrit (and i do not think we ever will). We have been brought up as though we had taken amrit buy then given the choice that if we do or not want to. We have intergrated into the western society but have never lost our identity. Now the two points

1) There is a ginetic disese that has affected my cousins from the day they were born 1 was born 4 years ago and the docters said that it would not affect any other child if my aunti and uncle had any, buy it did she is 1 years old. So i have this ginetic disorder which may have affected my family generations ago but no one knows. However, these two have it the doctors have given them 10-15 years each to live. My uncle and aunty have both drunk amrit and are religious but this is taring them apart it is also taring us apart i know that god does things to test the amount of religious perceverance we have but i am scared but but i do not go to god and console for there lives i think i am losing faith in god. I am a scientist and and have always tried to live with science and god but it is becoming hard. I have never asked anything from god ever as i have always had everything in the world provided, but have been thankful to god for the happiness he had bestowed on my family. Now i don not know i am losing faith and am scared to truely ask from my heart the first thing from god which is for there lives. I am afraid that if it is not granted i might lose all my faith in god.

2) I do not know to the full extent how if they die it will effect my family, my grand parents have become very ill in thier old age but they have fought cancer aned many other diseses and are fit and healthy. My grandmother is being eaten up by their ill health each day and sometimes her health does worsen. I am not sure what i can do as my scientific knowledge is useless as genetic research is not that asvanced yet, and a cure may not be ready for another 20-30 years. I know in my heart only i can sort out my predicament and nobody else but sometimes i just go crazy thinking about how useless it all is. My mother says have faith in god, but i do not know anymore i just do not know!!!

Thanks for any reply
(REPLY) As hard as it is to endure when a person is ill, even harder is to see the suffering of people we love. Disease and suffering are a part of life. Some people have more, some less - depending upon the karma with which they were born. Our genes come to us because of our physical karma. The purpose of life is to unite in our consciousness with the God who created us. Faith is one of the ways we stay connected. It's easy to have faith in God when everything is running smoothly, but part of this life experience is to keep faith in the midst of tragedy. We each live and die only at the will of God, there is no other reason. If you read and understand Japji Sahib, Guru Nanak explains in there so clearly that God is in charge of this world! We want everything and everybody to be healthy and happy, but that's not the way it is, and we want to blame God when it isn't. We don't always (or even sometimes) understand God's will -- but the truth is that everything is God's will, and to accept God's will is what makes a Saint. That's what our Guru's did, and that's what they teach us to do. Science and medicine are tools that God has provided, but ultimately, God is the Giver and the Destroyer of life, and we worship that One God because He has given us this precious opportunity to be in a human form so that we can consciously come Home to Akal Purkh when our karmas on Earth are finished. May God and Guru bless you with faith and understanding. SP