The Old Testament
stressed that the breaking of the covenant with God was a community
failure. Because one person was not loving, the whole community in its relationship
to one another and to God suffered.
Mainstream Judaism,
during the time of Christ, did not believe in an afterlife. The people
believed, consequently, that God rewarded good and punished evil in the here-and-now.
The Jews saw illness as a direct result of sin, a punishment from God for
a specific sin.
As a natural
consequence of this belief, people who were born with a defect were a source
of shame to their parents. To have such a child was to live in disgrace in
a community. Jesus rejected this view of suffering when his disciples asked
whose sin had caused blindness to the man who was born blind (Jn 9:1-3).
Jesus' response - that there was no sin, that the man's blindness would reveal
God's work in him – was a complete repudiation of the Jewish theology of illness.
Jesus said that
our judgment in the afterlife would be based on how we responded to all members
of the community, especially the least fortunate.
St Paul expresses
a similar notion in his famous Body of Christ imagery. In the spirit of Jesus
and his Father we are one; through the blood of Christ we are related to one
another. Because we are children of God, there must be social concern for
all.