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"Cassie raised the bar for me and my Christianity," said a member of her youth group.

To date, statistical evidence reflecting a resurgence of teen spirituality since Columbine is elusive. Even before the shooting, however, there was "a massive shift in cultural values and personal behavior" among teens, notes David B. Wolfe in American Demographics (April 1998): "[They] may dye their hair green and pierce their noses to shock their parents. But at the same time millions of them attend church weekly."

Still, anecdotal evidence abounds for the galvanizing effect this tragedy has had on teens all over the country. John Tomlin's girlfriend went on a short-term missions trip to Nebraska with John's brother Pat and was asked to speak to a group of teens about Columbine. "She thought she'd be talking to 20 kids," says Doreen. "She ended up talking to 300 or 400." Over a thousand teens from 28 states turned out in August for the Columbine Torchgrab youth rally in Littleton, vowing to pick up the torch of faith dropped by Rachel, Cassie, and others at their deaths. Darrell Scott recalls one youth event where he was speaking, traveling with Greg Zanis who displayed the 13 original memorial crosses, when over a thousand teens fell to their knees before those crosses, and almost as many accepted Christ.

"It is in our hands right now as a young generation," says Dana Scott. "We've been put in this position, and I think God is raising up a generation that is going to do things differently."

When Darrell Scott travels and speaks at youth conferences, he shares from Rachel's journal. In one entry, she wrote: "I want heads to turn in the halls when I walk by. I want them to stare at me, watching and wanting the light you put in me. I want you to overflow my cup with your Spirit . …I want you to use me to reach the unreached."

God answered that prayer, he says. "Columbine was a wound to open up the hearts of the kids in this country. Tens of thousands of young people have given their hearts to the Lord [since Columbine]; we know that from phone calls and letters. Organized Christianity hasn't been able to do that in decades."

A year to the day before her death, during Rachel's sophomore year, she wrote in her journal (April 20, 1998): "I have a heavy heart and this burden upon my back and I don't know what it is. There is something in me that makes me want to cry and I don't even know what it is."

Two weeks later, on May 2, she wrote: "This will be my last year, Lord. I've gotten what I can. Thank you."

Darrell Scott believes his daughter Rachel, along with the others, were chosen by God to be his instruments in this theologically weighted moment.

"She knew it was her last year. She was prepared. I believe this was a spiritual event. God's powerful enough to have prevented it. He protected my son, who should have been killed. Rachel should be alive—she was outside the building; Craig should be dead—he was in the killing room. You can call it warfare, but God is never out of control of what happens.

"This is true Christianity in its rawest form put to the deepest test," he says. "What happened there was spiritual," says John Tomlin. "Satan was there"—as the evening reading for April 20 of their Spurgeon devotion said: "There never was a day when Christianity seemed to tremble more than now."

Whether the deeds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will be covered by the "offense of the Cross" is beyond human ability to know. Even Brian Rohrbough says, "Everything is in God's hands and you either trust him or you don't. His judgments will be absolutely just." But on April 20, 1999, through their brutal acts, Niebuhr's "ominous tendencies of human history" converged upon Columbine High School. Evil reared its head, and Cassie paused. Then she said, "Yes." And "salvation for the human spirit" won the moment. That is why it has the marks of the perfect tragedy. It was the moment when everything went wrong, and the moment when everything was as it was meant to be.

Read more about these related topics:
—Violence
—Guns
—Persecution
—Martyrs

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October 4 1999, Vol. 43, No. 11