#given that i could hopefully someday do the role justice with the help of a LOT of training cause let's be real i need a lot of help

[thewhizzyhead]

if someone asks me "Who would you like to play in Hadestown?" I legit wouldn't be able to give them one specific answer cause honestly I kinda wanna play all of them loOK I JUST REALLY WOULD LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN A HADESTOWN PRODUCTION OKAY-

[manggojooz]

Bona Fide (Prologue)

main pairing: Namjoon x Kyungsoo x reader

word count: approx. 2,500

genre: lawyer!au, drama, slice of life, romance 

summary: They say good and bad as though it is black and white, but through whose eyes do we see whether it is black or white? 

warnings: none

comments: I’m back guys... i’ve missed y’all T.T just a little prologue to force start my lawyer au fic..

“You are called to the what?”, “A bar?”, “What’s a bar?”

The two most common assumptions of why the legal qualification is termed ‘the bar’ are that 1. all lawyers require alcohol to function, or 2. it is a metaphorical reference that the people who practice the law has met an undefined (but presumably higher) standard of certain qualities.  

So how high is this ‘bar’? Apparently not that high.  

---

You rather disliked the fact that it is a common assumption that whoever wanted to study the law should have an altruistic mission.  

The age-old question at law school interviews almost never deviates from the conundrum of “why do you want to study the law?”. And here, you faced the first paradox of your legal life – if you wanted to be a member of the bar, you should always act honestly, but if you always acted honestly, you will never make it into the bar.  

You tried to recall what generic idealistic answer you had given at your own law school interview. Meanwhile, the new batch of interviewees waited nervously outside the seminar rooms for their turn to be called in. “Look at them... bright-eyed and bushy-tailed... were we once like this too?”, Doyoung cringes as he turns to look at Lucas and you, and he pretended to be taken aback, “whatever happened to you guys man, you look like zombies now?”  

“As if you look any more alive. It's almost finals time and... I feel like I aged ten years in the span of three weeks”, Lucas gripes, dragging his feet along the squeaky floor.  

---

The years in law school taught you a lot. One of the first was that the law does not exist for an altruistic purpose.  

“The law is fair”, the professor said stoically, then abruptly breaks out into a chuckle, “if someone told you that... check to see if they have eyes that are bright and a tail that is still bushy.”  

To add on to that, law school was ‘university’ after all, and ‘university’ teaches you about life. So other than the occasionally disillusioning lessons about what the law actually serves, the characters whom you encountered in law school were more even more educational.  

Sure, maybe there were a handful of law students who truly intended to pursue justice. But most of them were just mortal. There were those who hail from a family of lawyers, there were those who only came because their grades were good enough, there were those who liked beer, there were those who slept around, there were those who wanted the mirage of prestige and pride, and there were those who only wanted a stable job.  

Most, if not all of these people will eventually make it into the “bar” one day.  

---

You carried a bag of stuff into the monochrome office. The cubicle walls and the chairs were a nasty shade of old navy blue. It was unusual not to have Doyoung and Lucas to cling on to but there was a slight flutter in your stomach. Graduation was a while ago, and now you were embarking on the arduous journey known as legal training, pupilage, or whatever they preferred to call it – basically you had to fulfil a slavery term before you could reach that seemingly prestigious end goal known as “the bar”.  

The office manager was a no-nonsense lady who quickly briefed you and all the other trainees about the office policies before showing each of you to your dingy little seats.  

Half the morning was spent with you setting up your work station, the cubicles around you were occupied by a handful of trainees just like you and your neighbour was a charming and cheery girl named Chaeyoung. After a round of awkward introductions, you settled back into your seat only to have the ringing of your phone make you almost jump back up.  

Did someone call the wrong number? Was the call actually for you? You picked up the receiver and uttered in a hushed voice, “Hello?”

“Is this Y/N?”, the caller spoke rather quickly.  

“Yes, I am.”  

“Grab your notepad, pen, whatever you need and come over to my room now”, a low husky voice commanded.  

“Ok, sure... I-”, your hands somehow started to tremble a little and you started looking around for your stationery but the man on the other side slams down his phone.  

Wait, wait... who is he? How would you know who to look for? “Shit”, you mumbled softly as you put down your phone and Chaeyoung peeps out from her cubicle next to you. “You okay?”, she asked.

“Yeah, I better try to figure this out...”, you replied with a sigh and an awkward smile.  

You quickly grabbed your things and walked towards the larger office area, where all the qualified lawyers were housed. Loitering around the printers tentatively, you were just dragging out each second trying to ponder what is your best way out of this. Unfortunately for you, because you were such a nervous wreck, you didn’t even catch the extension number which would have showed up on your phone.  

“Are you alright?”, a voice startles you as you leaned against one of the printers, fingers poking your temple harshly, lamenting your stupidity.  

His voice was deep and a little husky too, but it wasn’t that voice. You turn around to face him and he gives you a customary smile, a tiny dimple forming on his cheek. It was the first familiar face you saw that day. Kim Namjoon, a fairly well-known senior from your law school because he was always one of the top students and had been Law Club President for a year. Everyone was shocked when he rejected the offers from all the bigger law firms and joined this not so famous one instead.  

“If you are alright, could you please let me take my print out?”, he said with a curious expression and pointed at the printer you were hoarding with your body.  

“Oh I’m so sorry!”, you immediately jumped aside.  

“Are you one of the new trainees?”, he asked in a friendly demeanour.  

“Yeah, I am...”  

“You look lost, are you looking for something?”

“Uhh, actually I’m looking for someone”, you answered sheepishly.  

“Who?”, he looked up at you.  

“Somebody called me just now and told me to go look for him but he didn’t give me his name and I didn’t catch his extension number”, you slurred your words, trying to hide your embarrassment.  

“There’s a call-log function on the phone, you can use that to see who called you earlier”, he said matter-of-factly as he flipped through the pages of paper he just took from the machine, looking back down at the papers now.  

“OH! Is there? Thank you so much”, you gasped at your own dumbness, and you were prepared to run back to your seat to try just that when he stops you.  

“I’m Namjoon by the way. What’s your name?”, he introduced himself quickly.  

“Yeah I kind of know you... I mean I’m two batches below you, so we haven’t spoken before... I’m Y/N. Thanks so much for your help, I better go-”, you were processing your words as systematically as you could.  

“Oh nice... so you are from my school too? And you said you are Y/N?”  

You nodded. “If you are Y/N, then don’t bother running back to your phone, I think I know who called you, follow me”, he smiled a little bigger at you this time, his dimples becoming more visible. Guess this is why you always heard that he was popular back in school – nice and cute, what’s not to like?  

---

Namjoon kicked the door open, the other occupant looked up at him in annoyance.  

“You are going to break that door someday”, he tosses the remark at Namjoon.  

“Hopefully before they break my sanity... I can’t believe this, this guy just sent me a document that isn’t even marked up. How can they not even know to mark up the changes?”, Namjoon huffed while throwing the document onto a desk.  

The room was occupied by two tables, Namjoon saunters in and sits down at the one further from the door. He sees you still standing at the door and flicks his head to gesture towards the other guy in the room.  

“He’s the person you are looking for”, Namjoon said to you before turning to his roommate, “Kyungsoo-ya, next time could you at least say who you are when you call someone? How do you expect a newbie to know that it is you?”

“Why didn’t you ask if you didn’t know?”, the guy named Kyungsoo stared at you with his intensely huge eyes.  

“I... umm...”, what were you supposed to answer? Because you didn’t give me a chance to? Because I was too nervous?

He just continues to stare you down until Namjoon cuts in again, “Stop terrorising the trainee, our team is only getting one this year, don’t drive her away please. Plus, she’s my junior from school”, Namjoon said with a lop-sided smile.  

“Kim Namjoon, rule number one, never reveal your weakness first, how many times do I have to...”, Kyungsoo sighs and closes his eyes in frustration.  

When he opened his eyes again, he just looks back at his computer screen, “come in, leave the door open, we don’t want a ‘me too’ situation to arise here”.  

---  

Soon you found out that as a trainee, you stood in the most awkward position.  

There were the qualified lawyers, like the partners, the senior associates, the associates –  these people would treat you like their slave and not a comrade who was fighting alongside with them. It was understandable, after all being called to the bar as a practising lawyer seems to make them think that they were above everyone else.  

On the other hand, you have all the secretaries, the paralegals, the supporting staff – there was always an undercurrent of hostility between them and the lawyers, which transposes onto all the trainees. Some of them obviously had an inferiority complex while other more capable ones felt it was unfair that their status were always beneath the qualified lawyers when in reality, they probably played a more important role than those “lawyers”.  

Thankfully for you though, at least one of the paralegals on your team was amiable. Eunji graduated from a not-so-great law school and didn’t get through the bar exams, which is why she is slogging away at her paralegal job, trying to make a living while studying to retake the exams.  

---

“Namjoon, you must bully your intern a lot. She would rather hang out with your paralegal than with you and Kyungsoo”, Steven, a senior associate from the corporate team joked as you entered the staff lounge after lunch with Eunji.  

“Looking at them reminds me of when I first started practising, always looking so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed everywhere I went. Are you afraid of us? Do we scare you?”, Steven taunts while talking to you as though he was cooing at a baby.  

Namjoon only quietly sips on his coffee, momentarily contemplating whether to correct Steven on his use of the term “intern” since you were actually a “trainee”. He decided against it ultimately, lest he be called pedantic again.  

Eunji squeezed her lips together preparing her words to retort Steven but you beat her to it. “We are all colleagues in the same office, why is there a need to differentiate?”, you replied in an amicable manner.  

Namjoon raises an eyebrow approvingly, not of the point you made, but of your guts to say something back to the senior associate.  

“Lesson one for our new intern, in this industry, qualification is king. One day when you are qualified too, you will see the difference”, Steven’s tone was sarcastic to say the least.  

Namjoon subtly rolls his eyes and was deciding whether he should extricate you from this when someone else enters the lounge.  

She reminded you of the stereotypical lawyer portrayed in all legal dramas. There will be at least one character like her. Power aura, power heels, power red lips and just powerful all around. Namjoon looked up to see her entering and he seems to be affected by something. She too, looked at Namjoon fleetingly.  

Whatever Namjoon was feeling it obviously made him uncomfortable because he abruptly calls out to you, “Y/N, we have a new matter coming in later, Kyungsoo and I need your help with some research. The meeting starts in two hours, let’s go... there's not much time”, his words were fast and pointed, and he quickly stood up to leave.  

---  

You sat across from Eunji and Chaeyoung in the pub on the first Friday since you joined the firm. The three of you were already slightly drowsy. “What’s so great about getting called to the bar? Does that make them as powerful as the President? As great as the Gods? I don’t care about being called to that stupid bar... I would rather have a handsome guy call me to a bar”, Eunji slurs and giggles.  

That's right, what is so special about this ‘bar’ which you are striving towards, you asked yourself?  

You suddenly recalled what happened that afternoon. You were standing at attention in the associates’ room. Namjoon was looking worried while Kyungsoo was lashing out and demanding an answer from you. The words Kyungsoo spat in your face is still freshly etched in your mind, “if you are going to act like this, don’t bother becoming a lawyer!”

Tears start to form in your eyes again but you held it back. “It’s not great at all! And the standards aren’t even that high!”, you exclaimed loudly to cover up your emotions. Your volume was loud enough to startle the table next to you and Chaeyoung sheepishly apologises on your behalf.  

“As my best friend, Google, will tell you... the ‘bar’ actually used to refer to a physical barring thingy which separated the common people from those who were part of the court of law...”, you blabbered on in a tone mimicking your professors, but dropping to a whisper now as if this was a secret.  

It is a secret – the bar does not denote a certain caliber, standard or quality. The bar is but a demarcation of territory – that this is ‘us’, and they are ‘them’.  

“How can a law, that differentiates between people like that ever be fair? How can it?”, you whined. Chaeyoung uses her hand to cover your mouth, almost suffocating you in the process of trying to stop you from causing more disturbance. Eunji nodded furiously at you as she pours herself another glass of the alcohol, “It never is”, she whispers.  

[xgenesisrei]

An Asian Perspective on Creation Care Theology

*On November 10-12, the World Evangelical Alliance and the Lausanne Movement, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, gathered 70 people from 25 different countries to revisit the Jamaica Call to Action on Creation Care and the Gospel. I was given the responsibility to deliver one of the three plenary sessions on the theology of creation care alongside Dr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Dr. Jonathan Moo. Below are some notes of what I shared.

Mabuhay!

My task is to point to areas that should be emphasized more in developing a global theology of creation care, particularly from an Asian perspective.

“There is no reward in heaven for recycling, picking up trash, or planting trees.”

“We are called to save souls, not trees!”

“The earth will be destroyed in the end, no matter whether you polish it up or abuse it. It does not matter; it is not a church issue!”

You must have heard similar sentiments whenever the topic of creation care is brought up. For my part, the most memorable was during a workshop in the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan. An organization invited our team in Micah Philippines to help sustain the work rebuilding the devastated city of Tacloban. The task is to help church leaders get a good grasp of integral mission and reconnecting their people to the natural environment that has taken their loved ones, their homes, their livelihood, their churches, and for some even their faith. In one of the workshops, one pastor stood up and addressed us, “Ptr. Rei, it is really wonderful to learn from the Bible all these insights about holistic mission. I really appreciate it. But one thought has been lingering in my mind all throughout: what if the rapture happens tomorrow or next week, then all these efforts we are doing to rebuild our city will just come to waste?” For a moment, I think my mind went blank. Not because I don’t know how to answer his question. But because my heart sank at how deep theology can grip people’s souls that it can dissolve fresh encounters with the Word of God.

Of course, popular ideas like the one that entrapped the pastor in my story are anchored on what was presented as legit biblical teachings to churches. But these ideas came from somewhere. Before it was embraced and before it took root in the consciousness of Asian Christians, it was exported from other parts of the world.

And so, Hyunte Shin, in her research work entitled ‘The Influence of the Bible in Shaping the Negative Viewpoint of Korean Christians towards Nature’ (2020), concluded with this observation,

“The tremendous influence of certain brands of Western theology brought by Western missionaries from their home countries are the ultimate root of the apathetic stance of South Korean Christians towards environmental issues.”

What kind of brand exactly? Theological traditions with key doctrines that lead to a negative attitude towards the environment, in particular, that the natural world is destined to be totally destroyed by God’s judgment and the believers will be transported in the air from this wicked world in order to be with the Lord in heaven forever. Sounds familiar?

The same observation is made by Prof. Katsuomi Shimasaki of Japan. In a conference on environmental concern in Asia, he offered this analysis,

“There might be a theological reason why we Protestant Christians, especially evangelical Christians, have difficulty finding true value in everyday life and in good works. If we believe that the world around us will disappear someday, it follows that we ought not to labor to preserve the planet. If we believe that Christian salvation means the soul would fly away from the world to heaven, our attitude towards life on earth would naturally be indifference.”

Prof. Shimasaki traces this conviction from theological traditions that are heavily shaped by dualistic and Modernistic philosophies from the West.

And so, I guess, as we develop a more global theology of creation care, there is a need for our brothers and sisters in North America and Europe to confront ‘contra-creation care’ theologies as such. Otherwise, Asians would find themselves in endless debates about new forms of ‘green theology’ that can be thought of as distracting the church into saving trees instead of winning souls and thinking of the goodness of creation instead of the Great Commission. Walter Wink has a term for this confrontative activity, i.e., “naming the powers,” that is, identifying influential systems of reading the Bible that exercise authority over people’s mind and hearts under the guise of ‘biblical orthodoxy.’ We need to ‘name’ these toxic theologies that have caused harm not only to the welfare of the planet but also to the holistic spirituality of the people of God.

The challenge for Asians, on the other hand, is to recognize that such inadequate theological perspectives are by no means normative and universal, and can actually be dropped like a hot potato. This process, however, of breaking-free from imposed theological traditions are by no means easy. It is not easy because of the reality that it is now actually self-imposed in many parts of Asia. I’ve seen this in my country in the Philippines, in Cambodia, in Thailand, and even in China! The technical term for this is ‘colonial mentality’ -the thinking that it must be from the West so it must be sound. Undoing this kind of mentality among our people which has been deeply mesmerized by unhelpful Western thoughts and frameworks is what the process of ‘decolonizing’ is all about.

But decolonizing also comes with a challenge to be able to think on our own feet, read the Bible from our own horizon, led by the Spirit of God in our tongues, and boldly pursue where that journey can take us. 

And I am confident that our non-dualistic cultures and outlook as Asian people have what it takes to develop a more 'integral' approach to mission. Hopefully, this will allow for a strong theology of creation care to sprout, grow, and bear fruit in our context. Furthermore, I think we have it in our DNA as Asians to move away from the anthropocentric character of theology as we have it now in its popular forms. This can be something that we can contribute to the global theological conversation.

In the Philippines, for example, despite 500 years of colonization from Spain, Japan, and the United States, there remains to be a vivid glimpse of something deeply rooted in our culture that can allow us to read the Bible in such a way that we can see the breadth and depth of how the welfare of the planet is intertwined to the well-being of the people that inhabit it. For example, our spirit of hospitality and generosity as a people is anchored in our sense of being that is deeply relational. Our national language is in fact very rich with regards to the vocabulary of ‘kapwa’ -a word that can be translated in English as ‘fellow’ and captures the idea of what Jesus had in mind about being a good ‘neighbor’ (Luke 10:25-37).

The opportunity that this word, i.e., ‘kapwa,’ opens for us Filipinos includes rooting our creation care theology from an understanding that the rest of the created order are not simply ‘things’ or ‘resources’ for us to harness or marvel at. Instead, they are fellow creatures of God whose redemption is closely bound with the salvation of the children of God (as Apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 8). I think ‘kapwa’ mentality captures the sense of why the Hebrew words for man (adam) and soil (adama) are very closely linked. A theology of ‘kapwa’ then can lead my fellow Filipinos to a redemptive outlook that is more cosmic in scope, e.g., that God is saving and renewing the whole planet, bees, birds, rivers, and not just its people. It suggests a ‘theology of planetary neighborology’ as a relational framing of creation care wherein the whole of the earth forms a community of love and support for one another. I guess, this is the kind of thinking that ought to stir our imaginations in the midst of the pandemic rather than a paranoia for the coming of the Anti-Christ or whether the vaccine for COVID-19 shall come with the mark of the Beast.

In other words, what I am saying is that part of rejecting toxic theologies that are harmful to the harmony of the whole created order is the responsibility of Asian theologians to develop theological thinking that could provide alternative perspectives helpful in moving the global body of Christ towards a fuller vision of what the ‘shalom’ of the kingdom is about.

That’s my first point.

My second point is that a key element of what this kind of theological thinking, if it would be a distinctively Asian contribution, will have to touch upon is the issue of injustice. Any theology of creation care that will ignore or be silent about the justice angle of why we are now in a crunch time to work out our efforts on creation care would be less than honest. Let me explain myself why. This picture is how rain forests in the Philippines look like in 1900s. The next picture is how it ended up in 1990s. The first picture is pre-American occupation. The second picture is post-American occupation (the last of the US bases in the country to be shut).

It would be very difficult to rally our people in Asia to care for creation without addressing the issue of how at the very heart of colonization is the exploitation  of valuable natural resources by force. 

Somehow, we need to trace the link between our present climate crisis and the enduring impact of the history of colonization. We need a theology that shall be big enough to have a space for difficult conversations on this issue.

I do not need to belabor the point that the Global South has a lesser contribution to humanity’s unhappy role in aggravating climate change. But yet, it is people in the Global South who are the first to suffer from floods, droughts, and other effects of our current planetary disorder. As all of you may know, the Philippines is the gateway to the Pacific. Typhoons are a natural part of our lives. And God gave us a natural first line of defense. The picture below shows a remarkable mountain range that stretches from both ends of Luzon, the country’s northern region. 

Surely, God knows what he is doing, why he put our archipelago beside the Pacific Ocean, and why we can afford not to be so much afraid of what the ‘forces of nature’ can bring.

But when it is ‘unnatural calamities’ brought about by the irresponsibility and greed of a specific sector of humanity with capacity to abuse the environment on a massive monstrous scale, then that is another story. We are now seeing storms beyond their normal strength and outside of their regular rhythms. We are now seeing forests burning beyond control. And we have just seen and still are wrapping our heads with the impact of what happens when we transgress the safe natural boundaries that should exist between human beings and the animal order. This COVID-19 pandemic reminds us well that while we may find ourselves in the same sea, definitely, not all of us shall be in the same boat. For many of the countries without much safety net, a vaccine will not be enough to undo the loss of lives, livelihood, opportunities, and momentum for nation-building.

While it will be great to teach our children the value of recycling and garbage segregation, what do we do with big global companies and conniving governments that make no distinction between what is sustainable and unsustainable use of our planetary resources? It is good that we have stated in the Jamaica Call to Action the need to “radically confront climate change.” But climate change is just the fruit not the root of the problem. The elephant in the room is how to radically confront those responsible for climate change. May we take some time of deep reflection before we jump to article 10 of the Jamaica declaration about “peaceful reconciliation,” mindful of the inescapable truth that there can be no peace without justice.

The blood of the trees cry out. And God surely hears them in as much as he hears their praises (Psalms 96:7-13, 98:4-9, 148).

Integrating the deep demands of justice in our creation care theology will surely offend not a few, and I guess, annoy a whole lot more. But I am also confident that at the same time it will bring comfort and hope to those who have long been asking questions they cannot blurt out aloud.

Thank you!

-Rei Lemuel Crizaldo

*Our theology and worship working group includes participants from the north and south of the Americas, south and southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.