Jason Wong: Unifier of Family and Society.

What does Focus on the Family, the Yellow Ribbon Project and Dads for life have in common?

They are all led by Jason Wong, 54, a Colombo Plan Scholar, who worked in Singapore Prison Service before moving to the Ministry of Social and Family Develoment. 

At 49, in 2013, Jason left his work "to volunteer at Focus on the Family Singapore, which he now heads as chairman in an unpaid role."

Focus on the Family operates autonomously and has 12 affiliates worldwide. "It promotes strong families through services that include talks and workshops, compaigns such as its Date with Dad events, and counselling for parents and couples."

Jason is married to Donna Kng, 54, for 25 years and they have two children: Sara, 22, an undergraduate and Samuel, 17, JC student. 

Last year, Jason wrote a memoir titled Trash of Society: Setting Captives Free, about his more than twenty years of experiences doing what he does to heal broken families, reintegrate inmates into society, and strengthen father-son bond.

Lesson? Three.

1) Jason's economic professor once gave this advice: "Ask to be sent to a place nobody wants to go."

The logic is simple. The best talent would have gone before him at "high-sought-after workplaces" to solve problems there. 

So, what's left are "unpopular placements", and that may just be where the needs are the highest. 

If the harvest is plentiful, and the workers are few, then I thank god that Jason took up the calling to go where the gap is the widest, that is, places where few will go to make the greatest difference. 

This difference is not just in economic terms. It is not about how they will contribute to the economy, and when will they bear monetary fruits that the government can quantify for promotion, increment and redeployment.

The harvest is not economic alone, but social, spiritual and existential. It is about giving meaning to another and providing fresh perspectives. It is about saving the soul, so that the body and mind can live with hope. 

2) Jason said: "My financial situation was stable. Instead of accumulating more assets while I still have the energy, I felt I could give some of my best years to this."

At some point in our life, we have to start asking when enough is enough. If the rat race is about accumulating as much as possible in preparation for that proverbial winter, then when do we stop? 

Is winter ever going to come or are we making excuses because wealth and financial security define us?

Or, is it that we cannot imagine living without the trappings of wealth and fame because our worth is precariously held up by a metric that is based on an endless race to raise the bottom line (profit margin)?

These are questions that challenge us to the core because they do not seek a window dressing of our character, but to transform it whole, and for good. 

And I am deeply encouraged that Jason (and many courageous people I know) took that road less travelled to places often overlooked to raise not their bottom line, but the lives of many at rock bottom. 

And...

3) The impression the author of the article, Venessa Lee, got with the interview with Jason was that "this soft-spoken man seems motivated less by recognition and acclaim than by his Christian faith."

Jason affirms this when he said:-

"It's supposed to be a movement. It doesn't matter who founded it. Since I was young, I had wanted to live my life meaningfully. But it was not until I became a Christian at the age of 21 that I realised life was not just about I, me and myself or about academic achievements and accumulation of wealth."

"Instead," he added, "I learnt that life is about the giving of oneself, serving and loving others and helping them fulfil the calling in their lives."

I do not want to make too much of the giving of oneself, serving and loving others because it risks being a kind of fad or trend in the postmodernist movement. 

Unfortunately, this movement has resulted more in the enrichment of self than others. That is, we hitch on to (advertised) virtues just because it is the (most viable) springboard to the enlargement of our own estate.

But what Jason has taught me is that of a silent revolution in the heart before it ever gets to the public places. 

It is a life transformed first before it seeks to transform others. And such a life and its works are enduring because it does not define success by a worldly metric but a spiritual one.

I believe that is where Jason's Christian faith comes in. The essence of that faith is self-sacrifice, and the transformation of that faith is the heart, beyond appearances. 

I have always craved after a religion that addresses this aspect of the human heart as an end in itself, and not a means to an end. For when it is used as a means, the self is always enriched. 

And for me, the Christian faith does this surgery effectively by "piercing asunder the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

Truly, our greatest hope for redemption lies not in what we do for charity, but how our hearts are changed by charity (love).

I believe this is where Jason's unassuming life takes the lead, as he himself traces the footprints of his Savour who had walked before him. Cheerz.