The argument that came before the shots

One · What happened

Twelve hurt near Bragg Memorial Stadium

The Tallahassee Police Department gave reporters the count late on Saturday night through Chief Lawrence Revell. A shooting had broken out about eight o’clock near the stadium on Florida A&M’s homecoming weekend, and twelve people were injured. According to ABC News’s account of his figures, eleven of the twelve had been shot. Six of the people hurt were adults and six were juveniles under eighteen. The youngest was eleven. The twelfth person hurt was a grandmother of one of the victims, who hurt herself as she ran from the gunfire. On Sunday morning the department said six people were still in the hospital and one of them was in critical condition.

“What should have been a weekend of celebration in our community instead became a night of fear and violence,” Revell said. NBC News reported that detectives arrested a fifteen-year-old on Sunday. He faces eleven counts of attempted second-degree murder and a charge of possession of a firearm by a delinquent. Early findings, the department said, showed a physical altercation before the shots were fired. Police described a dispute between individuals who knew one another and said none of the victims appeared to have been an intended target. More arrests were possible, the department added, and the investigation was still open.

University President Marva Johnson called the shooting an “evil act” in a video message on Sunday. The university said the shooting took place near campus and that the campus remained safe. Whether Florida’s gun laws should change and how a fifteen-year-old ought to be charged are arguments for the legislature and the courts. Plenty of people are ready to carry both. Football coach Quinn Gray ended his reaction with a sentence about the argument itself.

Two · What it is doing

The fight that belongs to other people

“A physical altercation occurred before shots were fired,” the department said in its account of the night. Many readers file a sentence like that under other people’s trouble, since few have ever fired into a crowd or stood near someone who did. A dispute between individuals who knew one another sounds like a world of grudges and long histories. Many readers do keep a quarrel running of their own, with a brother over a debt or with a neighbor over a fence line. Each of them weighs that quarrel by what it has cost to date.

By the police account none of the twelve was an intended target. Six of them were under eighteen. The altercation had been among individuals who knew one another, yet twelve people were hurt, among them a grandmother and a child of eleven. A fifteen-year-old now waits for a court to decide the charges against him, a question that belongs to the judge and the evidence. None of the early reports said what the dispute was about. Many readers fill that gap from their own opinions about teenagers or about guns.

The number fifteen in the news of the arrest sends a reader to one of two verdicts within a second. One reader hears a child while another hears a gun in a boy’s hand. Each verdict feels like moral seriousness to the man who holds it, and either one can be held for a week at no cost to him. A man busy sentencing a stranger in Tallahassee has left the table where his own brother is waiting for a call.

Three · Where the ground is

What the Lord said to Cain at the door

Cain was very angry when the LORD had regard for Abel’s offering and no regard for his own. The LORD told him that “sin is crouching at the door” and that “you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). The warning came before anything had happened in the field. Cain spoke to his brother, and when the two were in the field he rose up against Abel and killed him (Genesis 4:8). The text does not record what Cain said.

What James traced the fights to

James wrote to scattered believers and asked what caused their quarrels. His answer in James 4:1 was a question, “Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” In the next verse he traced murder to the same origin, a desire that goes unmet (James 4:2). A quarrel over a fence line and a shooting outside a stadium are far apart in size, but James sets them in one passage with one beginning.

What Jesus did with the sixth commandment

Jesus told the crowd on the mountain that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). He had just quoted the commandment against murder. The liability he named begins earlier, with the anger. He then described a worshiper who remembers at the altar that his brother has something against him. The worshiper leaves the gift and goes to be reconciled first (Matthew 5:23–24). That man has hurt nobody, yet the instruction reaches him in the middle of worship, before he has said a word to anyone.

The man slow to anger

“A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention,” says a proverb collected under Solomon’s name (Proverbs 15:18). Another says where honor lies in a quarrel, “It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarreling” (Proverbs 20:3). Both are addressed to a man who is still in the argument and still has a choice about what he says. Neither proverb says anything about who started the argument.

A better word than Abel’s

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground,” the LORD told Cain after the killing (Genesis 4:10). The letter to the Hebrews tells Christians that they have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. Hebrews adds that they have come to blood sprinkled for them that speaks a better word than Abel’s blood did, a word of mercy for people who have done wrong (Hebrews 12:24). Abel’s blood called for an answer. Christ died for sinners and rose on the third day. The word his blood speaks to a man with a grudge, or with a gun in the house, is forgiveness for anyone who comes to him in repentance.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Each of the five takes a phone or a pew, and none of them waits for the police to finish in Tallahassee.

1. 01

   Put one quarrel on an index card.

   Take an index card and put at the top the one person you are still fighting with. Beneath that, put what you wanted from him. Read James 4:1–2 over the card and tell God which desire it shows. Cross the card out only when the fight is settled, and in the meantime keep it between the pages of your Bible.

2. 02

   Call the person who has something against you.

   Pick the brother or the coworker who may be holding a grudge against you and ring him this week. Say what you did and ask for his forgiveness. Offer no reason for it. Matthew 5:23–24 puts this call ahead of the gift at the altar, so make it before the next service.

3. 03

   Ask your teenager about the fight at school.

   Pick a quiet moment with a teenager you love and ask who at school is angry with whom this month. Listen to the whole answer before you say a word. A weapon in the answer goes to the school office and the police that same hour. Keep Proverbs 15:18 in mind while he talks, since a man slow to anger quiets contention.

4. 04

   Pray for the twelve and the fifteen-year-old’s family.

   Write Psalm 34:18 on a card, a verse that has the LORD near to the brokenhearted. Pray it each evening this week for the twelve who were hurt and for their families, most of them unnamed in the early reports. Add the family of the fifteen-year-old, who wait on a courtroom.

5. 05

   Ask your pastor who in the church is not speaking.

   Phone the church office this week and ask which members have stopped speaking to each other. Offer to sit with one of them over coffee and take no side in the matter. Jesus said the peacemakers will be called sons of God (Matthew 5:9), and a congregation gives a peacemaker people with names to practice on.