between behavior and experience. Suffering was believed to be a punishment for bad behavior, while prosperity was the reward for good behavior. If you were a wicked person, eventually you (or your descendants) would “get what’s coming to you.” For example, in John 9:2 Jesus’ disciples see a man blind from birth and ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” In that passage and elsewhere (e.g., Luke 13:1–5), Jesus rejects the idea that sin and suffering can be so closely connected,