Do you believe? The God question: The God question

It was posed at gunpoint to at least two of the victims in the Littleton, Colorado, school massacre. "Do you believe in God?" the killer asked. When a girl said yes, he shot her dead.

Another boy might have asked her the same question on a date. The sky might have been clear and full of stars, and he might have asked if she believed in God—or extraterrestrials, ESP or ghosts. She might have found the question in a teen magazine survey, several lines down from a query about her favorite color or if she would ever pose (à la Titanic) in the nude. Her dire predicament in the school-turned-death-chamber seems all the more poignant for all the mundane contexts in which she might otherwise have met the question.

Until recently, I had always thought of the question itself as rather mundane. I disagreed with those who seemed to regard it as the sine qua non of religious faith. I was more inclined to greet the question with that sarcastic verse from the epistle of St. James: "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder." Even Ku Klux Klansmen believe, though perhaps they do not shudder. Belief in God meant next to nothing as far as I was concerned. A living, active faith was what mattered. Of course, no one ever asked me "Do you believe in God?" with a gun pointed to my head.

More and more, however, I wonder if the question "Do you believe in God?" will emerge as the single greatest moral and political distinction of the next century. More and more I suspect that our common destiny, as well as our individual identities, will greatly depend on whether we answer yes or no.