Something went badly wrong in my life not long after I did something I am ashamed of, and I cannot stop thinking that God is punishing me.

“But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.”

Lamentations was written over the ruins of Jerusalem by someone who believed the disaster carried meaning, and even he insists that God does not afflict willingly. The Hebrew phrase is closer to 'not from his heart'. This is not a comfortable writer minimising someone else's pain. He is sitting in actual rubble and still refuses to describe God as eager to hurt people.

“And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

The disciples see a man born blind and ask the standard question of their day: whose sin caused this, his or his parents'. Jesus rejects the premise outright before he does anything else. It is one of the clearest places in the Gospels where a straight line from a person's sin to their suffering is refused, and the man in front of them stops being a case study.