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There is, however, one level on which Rosin is right. The near-mythic status to which Cassie Bernall has been elevated by some trivializes her life and her death. And in that regard "the Cassie myth" lives. Who Cassie was and the battles she faced every day as a Christian cannot and should not be reduced to a slogan on a key chain, T-shirt, or bumper sticker. This has predictably set her up for a fall. The backlash has been felt in this controversy. Sadly, both the mythmakers and the debunkers have compromised truth. In that regard, perhaps "truth is a trifle" for both sides. But many people can't seem to grasp that truth is not a "trifle" to evangelicals myths and legends are not what animate our confession. Truth is everything. What really happened in the library that terrible day may be beyond the scope of any investigation. But Cassie's "yes" carries sufficient testimony not to be dismissed out of hand. As for what her life means to the religious community, it takes tremendous courage to say yes to God in the face of death; it takes courage of another kind to keep saying yes to God while living every day in an incredulous and jaded culture. Zoba is associate editor for Christianity Today the author of Generation 2K: What Parents amp; Others Need to Know About the Millennials (IVP, 1999).

Related Elsewhere You can read the first chapter of Misty Bernall's biography of her daughter, She Said Yes,at Plough's official Cassie Bernall site, as well as the publisher's response to the recent doubts about what happened.After the September 23 Salonstory (and subsequent follow-ups by Salon and the Denver Post), other journalists simply accepted doubts as evidence that Bernall never said yes, including Hanna Rosin of the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune columnists Eric Zorn and Mary Schmich.Read Zoba's cover story on Columbine, " Do You Believe in God? How Columbine changed America" and her interview with the Bernalls, " Tough Love Saved Cassie." Both ran in our October 4 issue of the print magazine.

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November (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43