People ask me about horrible atrocities committed in the name of Christ. How do you as a religious person account for it? “Look,” I tell them. “Healthy people use faith in the right way; unhealthy people abuse it in the wrong way.”
Wesley Kenneth Stafford’s (1949-) parents were missionaries in the Ivory Coast of Africa in the 1950s and 60’s. At age six, Wess, along with his sister, was sent to an isolated boarding school seven hundred fifty miles away from his parents. As Wess recalled in an explosive Christianity Today article many years later, “I was abused in every way imaginable.” He was the victim of frequent physical beatings, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. He and the other children were told, “If you tell your parents that you are unhappy here, you will be Satan’s tool to destroy their ministry in Africa.” Like I said, unhealthy people abuse religion in the wrong way. After a defining moment at age ten, when Wess was singled out for speaking up about his perpetrators’ abuse, he resolved to do something for those who had no voice. True to his word, Wess went to work in 1977 for a Christian relief agency that specializes in sponsoring impoverished children, Compassion International. He adopted the Proverb, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” as his driving passion (Prov. 31.8). It became his sincere belief that every encounter with a child was a divine appointment. He became president of Compassion International in 1993 until his retirement in 2013. He wrote a book about caring for children, Too Small to Ignore. The title seems counterintuitive since normally we speak of something as too big to ignore. Yet he wrote, “Some things that are very, very important to God are not big but are too small to ignore.” Small children hold the future of our world in their hands. They also pay a heavy price for all that goes wrong in the world. Wess wrote, “The Spirit of a little child is a lot like wet cement. When a child is young, it takes little effort to make an impression that lasts a lifetime.” Wess pleads with churches to make children their highest priority. They are too small to ignore. A former staff member with Wess recalled a prayer he offered before a staff meal: