Eyes wide open

(Expanded from my eulogy at his funeral—celebrating the life of David Ho Lim Cheng and his return to his Maker)  My yea yea was nothing short of an excellent man. He was defined by a few unchanging values. Some of those values were all-important: for example, that all of life is lived to God's glory, that you use your might not to serve your own interests but to serve God and others, and finally,  that you never stop serving, not even in old age.  These were the values that yea yea held to strongly, and it determined how he spent his days.  There were also those values that yea yea held to quite strongly but which were perhaps less serious: for example, you never give up an opportunity to eat oh chien , however many there are in front of you, you always bring your granddaughters to KFC when your son drops them off at your house, and, as became evident in the last few weeks, you never decline tau fu fah , not even if you are semi-conscious and bedridden. Yea yea lived...

I was recalling some things I read in C.S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy  (an excellent read). I came across his account of journeying with literature while exploring religion, and he wrote about a curious distinction between the more religious and less religious writers. I'm not sure how strongly people would agree with his observation, but in any case, that was his personal experience in figuring out what he thought of Christianity. One thing I think is for sure though, is that his observation probably doesn't hold up for art in the past few decades.  Here is what he said:  “All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen it long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton ...