Refreshing Transparency

The reason I like Kuo is that, first, he seems truly sincere, unlike Towey, the Bush Administration’s designated hit man. Kuo seems sincere in a truly refreshing, entirely transparent, way that is seldom seen in the age of 24 hour cable news. The man seems incapable of artifice, which I’m sure is why the “naive” charge has legs, but it is also why I’m thinking I like naive in this political season.

Of course George Bush sounds sincere when he says that we are winning the war in Iraq or any of the other inanities he is wont to say. But if Bush is sincere, he isn’t serious. Bush may have believed what he said about compassionate conservatism during the 2000 election, but if he were also serious about compassionate conservatism, he wouldn’t have had to ask “have we done compassion?” He would have already known.

It seems to me that Kuo is both sincere and serious about helping the poor and sick....

Kuo seems to wear his humility on his sleeve, and I like that.

There are lessons here for us on the embryonic Christian left. We need to speak truth to power, Republican or Democrat, instead of trying to accumulate power ourselves. Of course the Democrats currently represent our best hope for achieving our goals, but that may not always be so, and we risk losing our way if we forget that. We need to keep hold of not only the sincerity of our beliefs, but also our humility. And we need to be open to working with those, like Kuo, Danforth, Cizik and others, that don’t share all of our theological or political beliefs. This isn’t about being victorious on the political battlefield, but responding to Jesus’ call to “follow me”.

[via I am a Christian Too]