How inured we are in the West to the fears that dominate the rest of the world.  In reading Infidel, Somali and Dutch activist and speaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, published in 1997, recently, I found myself marveling, again, at how insulated we are. When Ali left her native land, eventually making her way to the Netherlands, where she subsequently applied for refugee status, she saw police frequently.  In contrast to her previous experience with police in her native land, when a mere glimpse of a law enforcement official sent waves of fear rippling through her, she soon discovered that in the Netherlands, unless one has broken a law, one doesn't necessarily need to recoil at the sight of the police.  In fact, police proved to be very helpful to her as she wound her way through the various legal channels to attain refugee status and, after some years, citizenship.  Initially, however, Ali's worldview had no categories for such perceptions.
     On the other hand, not everyone in the West instinctively assumes that the police are on her side.  Just ask a person of color.  Although Paul's epistle to the church at Rome advises readers to obey the authorities, this dictum becomes difficult to swallow when one lives in an authoritarian society.  Why does God allow such regimes to persist?
     Although I cannot answer this question easily, if at all, I like it because it forces we who are ethnically comfortable in the West to realize that more people than not face very different and complex questions about the sovereignty of God.
     Accepting divine sovereignty comes more easily when one possesses political or economic hegemony.  When one is on the other side, however, it poses obstacles which those who have hegemony cannot always readily understand.  But understand we must. We must endeavor to see the world through the lens of every living being:  none would be here if not for the love of God.