Paul, I very much appreciate the problem. I think the answer will lie partly in developing a responsible prophetic discernment, which seems to me to be the thrust of the quote from Wright. There is surely the general biblical point that human suffering in whatever form is a consequence of a primal rebellion against God. But that theological premise does not allow us to read every particular hardship or horror as a direct consequence of personal sin. Jesus also resists that interpretation in John 9. Nor does it preclude compassion for those who suffer.

Equally, however, the fact that Job’s friends were wrong in interpreting his suffering as judgment for some sin he had committed does mean that suffering is never - in theological terms - a consequence of sin. Many voices in Israel in the second temple period interpreted its state of oppression as a consequence of previous rebellion against YHWH. When Jesus foretells great ‘tribulation’ for Israel in the coming years, he clearly regards it as a consequence of the nation’s refusal to take the narrow path leading to life. But this is to be understood within the particular eschatological narrative. It is not a general existential argument about sin and suffering.

To my mind the notion of divine judgment is too central to the thought of the New Testament to be dismissed. We have to find some way of taking it seriously without, as Daniel says, constructing a grotesque caricature of God. Injustice and suffering are part and parcel of collective (ie. political) human experience. They must somehow be integrated into our theology, not excluded out of some sense of moral distaste.