Too Small to Ignore: PART I

"While you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

– Christian author/speaker Tony Campollo to a large Christian gathering



My wife and I were in Ann Taylor shortly before the holidays, looking for some business outfits. While she browsed the racks, I wandered the store captivated not by the clothes but by the people admiring them. Oh, there's nothing wrong with the clothes or even the people interested in buying them. However, I couldn't help but feel that I was watching everything that is sick, twisted and warped about Western society. The racks went on forever, perfect little copies of each outfit parading down in one homogenous blob.

One woman picked up a turquoise top, glanced at it disgustedly and tossed it aside. Another snatched three or four outfits commenting aloud, "I'm not sure if I want one or all of them."

And suddenly, unexplainably, I was awash in memories of visiting Africa — of naked, emaciated children racing about my legs, of feeble men and women clad in the same tattered rags they had obviously worn since as long as they could remember.

I felt sadness.

I felt disgust.

I felt pissed off.

Throughout the entire holiday season, with each gift exchanged, with each feast to which I sat, I was never able to shake those thoughts, those emotions. Outwardly I celebrated, but inside I was coiled in anger and revulsion.

We live in a wretched society, I thought. I am wretched.

* * *


Wess Stafford is the President of Compassion International, a child-development organization that exists to release children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults. Founded in 1952 to provide Korean War orphans with food, shelter, education and health care, today, Compassion helps more than 700,000 children in more than 20 countries.

I've known Wess for over twenty years. When people talk of great men, of powerful leaders, of God's heart, they are talking of people such as Wess. My mother worked as Wess's assistant for most of her nearly two decades in Compassion's employ. Wess was always a father-figure to me and someone who continues to mentor me just by being who he is, even though we see much less of each other these days.

Wess has written a book, Too Small To Ignore about his childhood growing up in West Africa and his current calling as an advocate for children the world over. In this profound book, Wess challenges the church, primarily the Western church, to step up and care for the most tiny and vulnerable among us.

“We do not have the option of ignoring poverty.”

Too long, he argues, the church has committed sins of omission by shirking our God-given responsibilities to care for kids simply because they are the smallest, weakest and most easily overlooked segment of the world’s population. Moreover, Wess argues, our action is all the more imperative because children, in particular, feel the brunt of the world’s sin, poverty and abuse.

“No matter what the setting, children seem to be a second-rate mandate. No matter what the ills of society, it tends to spiral downward and eventually land with its cruelest and most smothering impact on our littlest citizens. Small, weak, helpless, innocent, vulnerable, and trusting, they are the waiting victims for our simple neglect and most evil abuse. No matter what goes wrong, the little ones pay the greatest price. We sacrifice children on the altars of our most destructive sins.

“Because children have no political clout or even a voice in global affairs, they can become marginalized. Since they don’t vote, they have little effect on the political powers that should act on their behalf. Every segment of society seems to have figured out how to protest, march, and agitate for its individual and collective rights. But have you ever seen children holding a protest? They have much to legitimately protest, but they are the voiceless and powerless. Our selfishness and greed cause them to pay the greatest price but they suffer silently.”

We must fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Children must cease being the lowest priority on our individual and governmental hearts and begin taking the place of respect, commitment, and attention that the Bible admonishes they deserve. After all, Christ used some of his harshest language on those who ignored or minimized children.

This is a book that focuses not so much on the great Commission, but the Great Omission. Americans lives such busy lives that we hardly have time for our own children, let only the children of the world. America spends more on garbage bags than 90% of the world’s 210 countries do on everything. We have twice as many shopping malls as schools. A professional basketball player makes as much in three hours as a teacher does in a year.

Something is dreadfully wrong with our values.

But feeding a child or putting him or her through school is not enough for Wess. Recovery from poverty requires a holistic approach. All facets of a child’s life must be addressed.

“We are shaping human lives, with all their wondrous complexity. If ever there was a project that required a multifaceted, holistic view, this is it. People are not a bank of pigeonholes. Their physical health is not walled off from their emotions, their finances, their social relationships, their sexuality, their skills and talents, or their spiritual beings. If we are serious about helping overcome poverty…we must care about all areas of their lives. It is not enough to concentrate on our favorite—say, health or education—and assume this will solve the rest.

“At its core, poverty is a mind-set that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ear of millions by the enemy Satan himself, ‘Give up! You don’t matter. Nobody cares about you.’ Poverty is an inside-out issue. It does its greatest damage on the inside, where it often cannot be seen. When a child in poverty says, ‘I matter,’ he has just taken the first teetering steps out of poverty.”

Wess sees children as the key, not simply the target. He has no illusions that Compassion or any other aid organization can save an entire country. But what he does believe is that saving a handful of children can do exactly that. Because those children--the indiginous children--will transform their nation from the inside out.

“One changed child eventually changes a family. A changed family will influence change in their church. Enough changed churches will transform the community. Changed communities change regions. Changed regions will in time change an entire nation. [A]ddressing the circumstances and conditions of poverty at the community level is not enough. There are simply too many corrupt levels of society for the benefit to ‘trickle down’ to the neediest. It just doesn’t work—or at least not often enough to make it worth life’s effort! But when the poorest of the poor are the ones changed, they come alive and ‘bubble up’ through their community. That breaks the back of poverty and brings a sustainable transformation, by transformed people, that cannot be taken away. While changed circumstances sometimes change people, changed people always change circumstances.”

Wess doesn't believe that it is the church's apathy alone that contributes to its lack of action. Sometimes, the problem seems so large that we don't know where to start...

TO BE CONTINUED...