Hiding to Seeing

On March 16, 1968, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was flying a helicopter over My Lai in Vietnam. As he looked down, he saw his fellow Americans massacring unarmed villagers. He could have stayed high in the safety of his cockpit, but he landed directly in the line of fire. Then, he ordered his crew to train their guns on the U.S. troops to stop the shooting. For decades, he was ostracized, bullied, and faced death threats for getting involved. But he also found lifelong brotherhood with the two crewmen who stood by his side.

"It's a shooting star!" "What, where?" (Obviously, they were far above our heads). I scrambled to find the tent's zipper in the dark and get outside. Peering up at the vast sky, I struggled to see the meteors. But as my friends showed me where to look, I started to see them for myself.

I was driving down a forgettable road in South Hamilton, MA. My creaky Ford Explorer screeched to a halt at a four-way stop sign. As I turned on the left-turn blinker and began my turn, it hit me in my chest, "I am your Father, and I love you." It was a moment when I wished I could cry, but the tears stayed bottled up. Still, it was an unexpected revelation that God knew me and he cared for me. For the rest of my drive, I felt filled with his love.

At the first managers' meeting of the year at RZIM's global headquarters in 2019, I gave a presentation called "The Fearless Organization." As we sat under a massive glass chandelier in the ornate executive dining room, I shared, "If our behavior creates fear in people's hearts, we are doing the opposite of what God has done to us. And John goes so far as to say that this is an indication that we do not have genuine faith in God." Little could I have guessed that two years later, I'd resign because of how people in that room had bullied me. Fear is the opposite of God's mission.

A friend once forwarded me an email. In it, he explained how he felt about God before he met me. He wrote, "When I first talked with Carson, I was very skeptical of everything he was saying because I thought that religion was entirely man-made. I thought that simple logic would suffice to tear Christianity apart." And when it comes to the resurrection, it's a simple case: dead people stay dead.