The warning nobody passed on

One · What happened

A ban in June, a shooting in February

On 10 February, in the small town of Tumbler Ridge in northeastern British Columbia, eight people were killed, among them five children and an educator. The shooter was eighteen.

Two weeks later OpenAI sent a letter to the province's minister. In it the company said that in June 2025 it had shut down the shooter's ChatGPT account after detecting a violation of its usage policy. It said it had not found credible and imminent planning that met its threshold for referring the account to law enforcement, and that under its newer rules it would refer that same account if it found it today. In April, Sam Altman wrote that he was deeply sorry the company did not alert police.

This week the province filed suit against the company and against Altman, asking for its emergency and recovery costs and for court-ordered changes to how the company handles violent threats. According to Al Jazeera, more than thirty families and victims have filed their own suits in the same court. What the plaintiffs say went on inside the company is still an allegation. How the case comes out belongs to a judge in San Francisco.

Two · What it is doing

Somebody saw it and did nothing

The anger at a story like this has a particular heat to it. A shooting is bad enough. A shooting that somebody saw coming, even partly, even a little, gets under a parent's skin in a different way. You picture the meeting, or the automated review, or whatever it was. You picture a person looking at a flagged account and moving on to the next one. And you want somebody to pay for that.

I think most of that anger is right. Scripture does not ask you to shrug when children die. But anger has a way of spreading once it gets going. A lot of people this week have moved from the company to the whole industry, to every tech executive and anybody who ever said these tools were safe. Some of them are writing things online about Sam Altman that they would be ashamed to have their pastor read.

And there is a quieter thing, if you let yourself look. Most of us have seen a warning of our own and scrolled on. A post from a kid in your son's class that was a little too dark. A neighbor who said something strange about his gun and his ex-wife. A friend who stopped answering. We decided, like the company did, that it probably did not meet the threshold. Usually nothing happened and we forgot about it. That memory is part of why the story stings.

Three · Where the ground is

Rescue those being taken away

Proverbs 24:11 and 12 are about exactly this. Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Solomon anticipates the excuse before it is made. We did not know. God answers that He weighs the heart. He knows how much we actually knew, and what we did with it.

That verse is hard on a company that saw something and let it go. It is every bit as hard on the rest of us. A Christian who reads it honestly cannot use it only as a weapon. It will eventually point at the phone in his own pocket and the post he decided was probably nothing.

Be angry, and do not sin

Ephesians 4:26 says, Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. Paul lets the anger stand. Nobody in that verse is told to calm down about eight people shot. He limits how long you nurse it and what you do while you are nursing it. Cursing a man online by name is over the line, in my opinion, whatever he did. A phone call to the police about a real threat you have seen is about the best use anger can be put to.

The lawsuit itself is a lawful thing. Romans 13 gives courts their work, and Christians can be glad when a wrong gets tried in a courtroom. What Romans 12:19 takes away from you is the private vengeance, the part where you appoint yourself the one who makes somebody pay. God says that belongs to Him, and He is a better judge of what happened inside that company than any of us.

The families in Tumbler Ridge

Past the headlines about technology and lawsuits there are parents who buried children this year, a family that buried a teacher, and a family that lost two people to their own son and brother. Most of the coverage this week was about a company. Those families are the ones who need your prayers, and they probably will not be in the news again until the next ruling.

Four · Today

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

The court will handle the company. Your part is closer to home.

1. 01

   Report the thing you have been sitting on.

   If a post or a message has bothered you for weeks, send it to the police or the school today. Let them decide whether it meets anybody's threshold. That is their job.

2. 02

   Keep praying for the families in Tumbler Ridge.

   The families who lost children, the teacher's family, and the shooter's own relatives, who lost two people and carry the rest. Most of the coverage has moved on to the lawsuit. They have not.

3. 03

   Go back through your own warnings.

   Is there somebody you stopped checking on months ago, a friend or a nephew who went quiet? Call him this week and ask how he is really doing, and then actually listen.

4. 04

   Ask your teenager who he talks to when things get dark.

   A person or a chatbot. Ask without a lecture and listen to the answer. If it is a chatbot, do not panic in front of him. Tell him you would rather it be you, and then make yourself easier to talk to.

5. 05

   Settle the anger before you sleep.

   Ephesians 4:26 gives you until sundown. Tonight, tell the Lord the whole of it, the company, the executive, your own missed warnings, and ask Him to sort out which parts of it are His and which are yours.