Nine people were murdered at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Monday afternoon. The youngest victims were in Grade 7.
There is no theology that makes this okay.
And if you’ve come here looking for someone to explain why God allowed a shooter to walk into a school in the Canadian Rockies and open fire on children — I can’t give you that. Nobody can. Anyone who tries is lying to you or to themselves.
But I can tell you what God says to the people standing in the wreckage. And it’s not what most of us expect.
What Happened
On February 10, 2026, at approximately 1:20 p.m., an active shooter entered Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in northeastern British Columbia. Within minutes, nine people were dead. Twenty-seven others were wounded — two critically enough to be airlifted out. Two more victims were found dead at a nearby residence connected to the attack.
The suspect was found dead inside the school from a self-inflicted wound. Family members have identified the shooter as Jesse Strang, 18, who was biologically male and had identified as a transgender woman since 2023. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) initially described the suspect as “a female in a dress with brown hair” and later referred to the deceased as a “gunperson” — not a gunman, not a shooter. Police have declined to officially confirm the name or discuss the suspect’s identity.
RCMP officers arrived within two minutes of the first call. By 5:45 p.m., the alert was cancelled. The killing was over. The grief was just beginning.
Tumbler Ridge is a town of 2,400 people in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, more than a thousand kilometers north of Vancouver. It’s a former coal mining community that nearly died when the mines closed in the early 2000s. It survived. It rebuilt. It earned a UNESCO Global Geopark designation. The mayor, Darryl Krakowka, told reporters he would know every victim personally.
“I call them family,” he said.
The school serves about 160 students, Grades 7 through 12. All schools in the district remain closed through the week. Federal flags are flying at half-mast for seven days. Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled his trip to the Munich Security Conference. He held back tears at the podium.
This is Canada’s deadliest school shooting since the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. It is the worst attack on a secondary school in Canadian history.
The Elephant in the Room
Within hours of the shooting, the culture war arrived. It always does.
Jesse Strang was transgender. That is now a fact in the public record, confirmed by family. And before the blood was dry in the hallways of Tumbler Ridge Secondary, that fact was being weaponized by every tribe with a platform.
On one side: commentators who immediately connected the shooting to trans identity, citing this as part of a pattern, demanding that gender ideology be named as a root cause. On the other: media outlets and officials who seem more concerned with pronoun protocols than with nine dead bodies. The RCMP’s decision to use the word “gunperson” in official communications — while families were still being notified — tells you everything about where institutional priorities sit.
Both responses are failures. And both are predictable.
Here’s what the Bible says about this, and it cuts against everyone.
First: a person’s sin is their own. Ezekiel 18:20 — “The soul who sins, that one shall die.” Jesse Strang is responsible for Jesse Strang’s actions. Not trans people as a group. Not gender ideology as a movement. Not progressivism as a political project. One person walked into a school and killed nine people. That person bears the guilt. To conscript every transgender individual into collective blame for a mass murder is not justice. It’s scapegoating. And Christians should know better, because we’ve been scapegoated too.
Second: a culture that is confused about the most basic realities of human nature is a culture in crisis. When institutions cannot bring themselves to say “man” or “woman” in the aftermath of a massacre — when the language of biology becomes more controversial than the language of violence — something has gone profoundly wrong. Genesis 1:27 says God created humanity male and female. That isn’t an opinion. It’s the architecture of creation. And a society that treats that architecture as optional will produce confusion at every level — including the deepest, most personal levels of identity and belonging.
Third: none of this explains why nine people are dead. The trans debate did not pull the trigger. Mental illness, spiritual darkness, access to weapons, human evil — these are closer to the machinery of what happened. Reducing this massacre to a culture war talking point is an act of profound disrespect to the dead. They deserve to be mourned as people, not drafted as arguments.
The church’s job is not to win the news cycle. The church’s job is to tell the truth — all of it, even when it’s inconvenient for our preferred tribe — and then to weep with the people who are weeping.
We can hold all of this at the same time. We must.
The Question Nobody Wants to Ask
Here’s the question that will surface in every conversation, every vigil, every sleepless night in Tumbler Ridge this week. It’s the question that has surfaced after every massacre since Cain killed Abel:
Where was God?
But I wonder if that’s even the right question anymore. I don’t think most people are asking where God was. I think we already forgot Him. As a society, we stopped looking for God a long time ago — and that’s worse. The question “Where was God?” at least assumes He exists. What happens when a culture stops assuming that?
What happens is this: when the shooting starts, there is no one to cry out to. No name to call. No presence to run toward. Just the dark, and the silence, and the body count.
But for those who still believe — for the parent who dropped their child off at school Monday morning and will never pick them up again — the question is real. Not as an academic exercise. Not as a seminary debate topic. As a scream.
The Bible doesn’t flinch from this question. It asks it constantly.
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1)
“You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep… Darkness is my closest friend.” (Psalm 88:6, 18)
One-third of the Psalms are laments. That’s not a footnote. It’s a genre. God gave His people a hymnal, and a third of it is screaming.
And for those who are not His people — those who do not recognize Him or call on His name — this is the sad reality of living without that anchor. I’m not saying this is judgment. This is tragedy. When this happens, all families hurt. But those who do not call on God have no one to call on. The agony sits in the darkness, and nothing answers it.
What Lament Actually Is
The modern church doesn’t know what to do with lament. We’re good at praise. We’re good at thanksgiving. We can even handle confession if we keep it vague enough. But raw, unfiltered grief directed at God? That makes us uncomfortable.
So we skip it. We jump straight to Romans 8:28 — “all things work together for good” — and paste it over the wound like a bandage on a severed artery. We mean well. We don’t realize we’re being cruel.
Biblical lament is not complaining. Complaining walks away from God. Lament runs to Him — screaming.
The structure of a lament psalm has five movements:
Address — Turning to God. “O LORD…”
Complaint — Telling God what’s wrong. Raw. Unfiltered. Holding nothing back.
Trust — Remembering who God is, even when He feels absent.
Petition — Asking God to act.
Praise — Not denial. Defiance. Choosing to worship from the pit.
Lament requires more faith than praise, because it demands that you bring your ugliest emotions to a God you believe is both listening and sovereign. The person who laments is the person who still believes God is there. The atheist doesn’t bother.
And then there’s Psalm 88 — the one lament that never turns. No resolution. No praise at the end. The last word is “darkness.” And God included it in the canon.
Why? Because sometimes the darkness doesn’t lift. Sometimes the lament doesn’t resolve. And Psalm 88 is God saying: I see the people in the darkness. I haven’t forgotten them. I gave them a song to sing when they can’t sing anything else.
Tumbler Ridge needs Psalm 88 right now. Not Psalm 23. Not yet.
The Theology We Must Not Offer
In the coming days, well-meaning people will say terrible things to the families of Tumbler Ridge. They’ll say them in churches, in casserole lines, in text messages. They will think they’re helping.
They are not.
“God needed another angel.” No. God doesn’t need anything. Children don’t become angels. That’s not theology — it’s a greeting card.
“Everything happens for a reason.” The theology behind this sentence may be sound. The timing is savage. Saying it to a mother who just buried her twelve-year-old is not comfort. It’s violence wearing a Bible verse.
“God has a plan.” Yes, He does. But saying it now — in this moment — just sounds like you think the plan was to kill their kid. It isn’t helpful. Not yet. Not today.
Here’s what six centuries of Reformed pastoral theology tells us to say instead:
I don’t know why this happened.
God is present in this, even if you can’t feel Him.
You’re allowed to grieve.
I’m here.
That’s it. Presence is ministry. When Job’s friends arrived and sat with him in silence for seven days, that was the best theology they ever offered. They ruined it the moment they opened their mouths.
A God Who Knows What It Is to Lose a Son
Every religion has something to say about suffering. Only one has a God who bled.
When the Father sent His Son to the cross, He did not watch from a safe distance. The eternal fellowship of the Trinity — unbroken since before time began — was fractured at Calvary. Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
God knows what it is to lose a Son to violence. He ordained it. He could have stopped it. He didn’t — because the death of His Son was the means of saving yours.
This does not make the deaths in Tumbler Ridge acceptable. Nothing makes them acceptable. But it means that when a parent in Tumbler Ridge cries out to God this week, they are not crying out to a God who doesn’t understand. They are crying out to a God who has stood exactly where they are standing.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
And there is this: Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He wept with resurrection power in His hands. He could have skipped the grief and gone straight to the miracle. He didn’t. He stopped and wept.
If the Son of God grieves death even when He’s about to reverse it, then your grief is not a failure. Your tears are not weakness. They are the weight of love, and they are seen.
“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” (Psalm 56:8)
Evil Is Real. Sovereignty Is Real. Both.
This is where theology gets hard, and where most people want to pick a side. Either God is sovereign and somehow complicit in evil, or God is good and somehow powerless to stop it.
The Bible refuses the choice.
“This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23)
One verse. Two realities. God’s definite plan. Human lawlessness. Both fully operative. Neither canceling the other.
The person who did this in Tumbler Ridge was genuinely evil. He is not excused by God’s sovereignty. And God is genuinely sovereign. This suffering is not outside His control. Both things are true at the same time, and neither one softens the other.
This is not a satisfying answer. It wasn’t meant to be. When Job demanded an explanation, God didn’t give him one. He gave him a tour of the universe — the stars, the sea, the wild donkey, the leviathan — and said, essentially: The world is more complex than you can comprehend. Will you trust the One who built it?
Job wanted a reason. God gave him Himself.
That exchange is recorded in Scripture not because it resolves the tension, but because it shows us where the tension leads — not to an answer, but to a Person.
The Children
I need to say something about the children, because this is where the grief becomes unbearable and the theology becomes most important.
Matthew records that when Herod slaughtered the children of Bethlehem, Scripture didn’t flinch:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18)
Rachel refused to be comforted. And Scripture honored her for it. Her grief is not treated as a failure of faith. It is recorded as a holy act. If Rachel can refuse comfort and still be honored in the pages of God’s Word, then the mothers of Tumbler Ridge can too.
And there is a promise — fragile, ancient, and fiercer than it looks.
When David’s infant son died, he said: “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). David believed he would see his child again. The Bible has taught this for centuries. The Westminster Confession affirms that “elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit” (WCF 10.3).
Your child is not lost. Your child is held.
That sentence is not a platitude. It is a theological conviction built on the character of God, the efficacy of Christ’s atonement, and the testimony of David. It does not erase the grief. But it anchors the grief to something that will not move.
What Christians Should Do
Weep. Before you theologize, weep. Romans 12:15 doesn’t say “explain to those who weep.” It says weep with them. The first ministry of the church to Tumbler Ridge is tears.
Pray specifically. Pray for the families of the nine victims. Pray for the twenty-seven wounded — especially the two in critical condition. Pray for the first responders who arrived in two minutes and walked into horror. Pray for the students who barricaded themselves in classrooms and heard gunshots. Pray for the mayor who knows every victim by name.
Resist the hot take. The gun control debate will come. The mental health debate will come. The political debate will come. Let them come later. Right now, there are parents planning funerals for their children. The church’s first word should not be a policy position. It should be a lament.
Send help, not opinions. The Parent Advisory Council has established a fundraiser for affected families. The practical needs — funeral costs, medical bills, counseling, travel — will be staggering for a town of 2,400 people. If your church can send money, send money. If you can send counselors, send counselors. Don’t send tweets.
Make your church safe for grief. When Sunday comes, there will be people in your congregation carrying this. Some will have connections to Tumbler Ridge. Others will be carrying their own old wounds that this has torn open. When the only acceptable Sunday emotion is gratitude, we force suffering people underground. This Sunday, give your people permission to grieve.
The Promise
I want to end here, because if I don’t, despair wins. And despair does not get the last word. Not because I say so — but because God does.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)
Not “tears will cease.” He will wipe away every tear. This is not a policy change. It’s a personal act. The sovereign Creator of the universe will take His hand and wipe the tears from your face.
That day is coming. It hasn’t come yet. And the distance between now and then is where faith lives — bruised, limping, sometimes barely breathing, but alive.
The nails couldn’t hold Him. And whatever has you pinned right now won’t hold you forever either.
Tumbler Ridge is in the valley of the shadow of death tonight. But the psalmist said through — not in. The valley is not your address. It’s a passage.
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)
He is near to Tumbler Ridge tonight. He is near to the parents. He is near to the children in hospital beds. He is near to the first responders who can’t unsee what they saw.
He is near. And He will not leave.
If you or someone you know is affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy, the BC Crisis Centre is available 24/7 at 1-800-784-2433. For counseling resources, contact the Canadian Mental Health Association at 1-833-456-4566.
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