Monday, December 18th | Little Women

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A healthier, happier you is just a click away. That said, let's start the show. Hello, everyone. Today is Monday, December the 18th. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028. Or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

That's right. You guys can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the show. You can help us share it online with your friends and family. You can leave us a good five-star review on iTunes or Spotify. Absolutely nothing less under any circumstance and for any reason.

We're going to leave some links in the description to help you guys do just that. Today's verse of the day is coming to us from Psalm 69 verses 30 through 32. It says, I will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bull which has horns and hooves. The humble shall see this and be glad, and you who seek God, your hearts shall live. You know, oftentimes when we read about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, it can just seem like a drudgery.

It can just seem like something that just kind of bogs you down. And really, truthfully, it was meant to be that. It was meant to show us our need for a Savior. And when we look at what God has done through Christ, especially here at Christmas, when we look at what Christ accomplished for us, being born as a baby, living a sinless life, dying on the cross, and then rising again on the third day, it should prompt a spirit of worship in us. And I think there's this move to—not even a move, there's just this natural human tendency to want to go back to that drudgery in our relationship with God. You know, Jesus has come and has given us grace, established this new covenant under his blood. But we still want to impress God.

We still want to show him all the things that our church is doing, all the worship songs that we do and all the services and all the outreach and all the stuff, not to help people here on this earth, but to impress God, or even worse, to impress the people around us. And it just makes you feel exhausted. And that's why there's so many churches who, around Christmastime, feel so drained. They don't feel energized by the stuff they're doing because they're not doing it for the right reasons.

It's like the church in Ephesus lost their first love. You lost the why. You lost the why behind what you're doing. And we want to not say this in a way that condemns you, because I've been guilty of that.

I've done that. Just kind of going through the motions, going through the drudgery, but you've got to take a step back and remember why it is you do what you do, why it is we worship. Why we're so busy at Christmas is because there is something worth celebrating, that Christ came and he died for us. That is worth our celebration. That is worth our energy. That is worth using every opportunity to praise and worship our Savior.

I'll give you an example right now. With the play, the winter play that we did just this past weekend, I didn't, which honestly, I wasn't nearly as involved as you were, but I didn't feel overwhelmed, stressed. I didn't feel that way at all like I have with previous plays. I felt like the entire thing was fun.

It was energetic. I know it was a ton of work, but I never once felt like, man, I wish we weren't doing this. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

There were some times that I felt the crunch. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's showtime. We're getting close. Do we really have this ready? Is this lined in?

Is this lined in? But we had a great team working together. I mean, us working together, Dr. Shah, offering leadership, guidance, especially his forward. Even more than that, like technical aspects, he was like, hey, change the lighting here. Move this around, because he's got an eye for that.

He's got an eye for stage, for broadcasting, for multimedia. It was enjoyable, even in the busyness of it, because it was busy. How do you feel now that it's over? Oh, man, I feel lighter. I feel like a mental load has been lifted. Do you feel the sadness of, because they say in theater and drama, you get so into the characters that you start to feel sad once it's over. Oh, 100%, 100%. Those post-show blues are a real thing. Really? Because, I mean, we've been doing this for auditions. We're back in September. So we've been living and working alongside these characters that have developed for months at this time. I mean, the magic has kind of gone. I think what most people want to know is, how did you get Dr. Shah not only to act in the play, but to wear a beard?

I'll be really honest with you. The beard was his idea. The beard was his idea? The beard was his idea. In the ten years that I've known him, he's never once wanted to even grow. I think he's shaved every single day.

I don't think I've known him to really skip a day of shaving. Now, this was a prosthetic. It was a false beard, so we had to glue it onto his face every showtime. But it was his idea. He wanted to do it.

I want to talk to him about it after the break. The first time I saw him, I saw him with just the mustache, and I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. And then like an hour later, he was on stage during dress rehearsals with the beard.

Full beard and everything. He was like a Civil War uniform. He was like a Union chaplain. He was a chaplain for the Union Army.

That's the character he played. Let's take a break and then come back and talk to him about it, because I was really interested to know what his take on the beard was. Absolutely. And it was a wonderful show. If you guys have questions about our show, Little Women, or what the next show is coming up. We already talked about a spring show. We'll let you know what, give you a sneak peek at that.

Write in and let us know, 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. We'll be right back. You can worship God in any situation. In the car, at home, in the gym, while cleaning your house. Wherever you are, we'll be right there with you. You can check us out on Apple Music or on Spotify.

Anywhere digital music is consumed. We've got a few singles out right now. We have an EP out as well. And right now, at this moment actually, we are working on our first ever full length original album.

Hopefully that's going to be out sometime this coming summer. ClearView worship on iTunes and Spotify is your 24-7 place for inspiration and worship. Follow us today and let God's message of hope, love, and faith be a guiding light in your life. Amen. Let's hop back into the show.

We are coming at you live from the ClearView Today studio on this fabulous Monday morning with Dr. Abadan Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism. I also didn't know this, but you did some time as a infantryman or as a chaplain in the Union Army. The Union Army.

During the Civil War time. You did some time. You did some time. What? Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, I didn't realize that you were in the Civil War. You looked good. I'm not going to lie.

The beard. I would have. This is just me.

I'm still laughing when they hit it sometime. Hard time. That's hard cheese, Dr. Shah.

I mean, the Civil War probably was a hard time. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But I'm thinking like on a chain gang, Cool Hand Luke style.

Dr. Shah in like an orange jumpsuit. Can we restart the show? I think we're good.

No, we're good. So, the play. You were Mr. March. Yes. In the Christmas play that we just did here at ClearView. That's right.

Little Women. That's right. And we finished. I feel like we finished strong. Yes.

One of the strongest plays we've ever done. Oh, absolutely. My reason to join the play was sort of from Nicole. She said there is a scene where Mr. March gets a kiss on the cheek from Mrs. March. Because I think it's Joe who sends the kiss, right? And so she said, you need to be on the show.

I'm not kissing anybody else. I said, oh, okay. Does that mean I have to be in the show? She said, yes. So that's sort of how I got drafted in the show.

Sort of the necessity is the mother of invention sort of thing. Drafted into the show and then drafted into the Union Army. Union Army.

Right. I was Mr. March the chaplain. And so I thought it was also cool because it would have just as been, it would have been just as easy to say this Mr. March won't have the beard. But you went full beard makeup. I had full beard. The glue, the mustache.

Yes. You went all out. It was intense. I did. Thank you to Ryan and Elizabeth and a couple of our other folks like Kendra and Natasha, who were very helpful in all of this. And so, so glad I did it.

So glad I did it. Well, thank you to you for having a theater ministry here at Clearview. I mean, I know just from us talking and from the ways that you've shared with us, that's your heart is having done theater and seeing the way that it impacts.

People don't know that, but I've been in theater. Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. A lot of Charles Dickens stuff.

Oh yeah. What did you do? A Tale of Two Cities? I did Tale of Two Cities. I played Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay. It was a double role.

Mayor to Lucy Manette. Very nice. Oh yeah. Very nice.

A lot of Charles Dickens. I forgot those names. They just came back to me. Right. Just like that. Oh, that's there. I remember those names. The muscle memory.

How did that happen? Is Oliver Twist a Christmas story? I know it's, I know Christmas Carol obviously is.

I actually know. I don't know if Oliver takes place at Twist, Christmas or not. I don't know if it takes place at Twistmas. Twistmas. Let us know if Oliver Twist is a Christmas story. So here's a good question. Because a lot of churches, when they hear that we have a theater ministry, what they think is what the vast majority of churches do, we write like a five minute Christmas skit.

Like a little Christian skit and do it on Sunday morning. They don't think or they don't assume that it's a months long production for two full nights. How many people would you say were at the play? Like 400 per night? I would say so. Yeah.

Based on the tickets that we took. Yeah. Definitely. I think.

Certainly if you include all the people who were on stage and backstage, I mean, we're approaching like $4.55. When we say that we have a theater ministry, these are like legitimate plays, legitimate productions that we put on every single, what, two a year? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Christmas play. And then we've got one coming up in the spring as well. We're excited, gearing up for that already.

But you know, the thing I appreciate the most is that it gives people who are inclined toward the arts, it gives them an opportunity to use those gifts and those talents. And everything that is done through Clearview Theater is framed with our goal is yes, we're going to pursue excellence. Yes, we're going to memorize lines.

Yes, we're going to have really excellent tech. But our goal is that people would understand the gospel. That's right. Our goal is that people would understand that God is a creative God and he engages his people through story.

Yeah. Everything we do in the theater ministry is what I'm talking about is to get people to maybe cry a little, laugh a little. And while they're doing those things, their mouth will open wide enough for us to drop the pill of the gospel.

That's right. And we've had people, you know, ask us like, what, what you're doing and the things that you talk about on the Clearview Today show, they're not related to the Bible at all. They're not Christian. So, but this is a Christian show. And yet fiction is one of the things that Jesus himself used constantly, constantly to prove his point. It's called parables. Right. Right. He told fictional stories that were to teach us something or like, even like you said, to show us a mirror of ourselves. And the best fiction, especially Little Women, the best fiction that's out there holds up a mirror to the human condition and says, life is like this.

That's right. And that's kind of what I was going to ask. Why Little Women?

How did we land on that play, especially for a winter Christmas play? Yeah. Well, Little Women, I came to know about Little Women when Nicole and I got married.

Prior to that, I didn't know that existed. Right. And she rented a 1994 movie starring Susan Sarandon. And I did what most men do when a girly movie comes on. Either fall asleep or complain, ripe a little bit. Yeah.

Or make fun of it. I was like, well, why don't you just do this? So I mean, I was, you know, you always like feel like, you know, so much better on how that character should handle the situation. Right. A male would have done this. So I did all of that.

I even suggested watching The Tombstone, which is the all time greatest movie. Of course. Because those men know how to solve their problems. That's right. That's right. They solved it real fast. Little Women, you got like act, like the very last scene of the play, they're still talking about the same problem from act one. I'm like, no, no, that would have been long solved. Yeah. This is, this is a bunch of women sitting around talking about their problems and it's like, well, Artemitate's life. Oh, Terminator.

Just terminate it. Yeah. Well, you know, when I began to like pay attention to them is when we had our two girls, Rebecca, of course, in 1995, Abigail in 1999, and that's when I went on David's suggestion. He helped me phrase that from, get ready for this, Tombstone, Terminator, and Lethal Weapon to Tiara, Temper Tantrums, and Little Women. Very nice. I love it. Did you like that? Yeah, that was pretty good. That is beautiful. David, thank you. I give you credit for that. You wrote that, David?

Yeah, he helped me. That's how my mind works. So that this movie is not a movie, it's, it's, it's a classic novel of the American life. And it has gone through four remakes that we know of 1918 was a silent film. Then 1933, 1949, 1994, and 2019 with many other modern retellings in between. And so it is not just any little girly movie or girly show or novel, this is a classic for a reason.

Yeah, it's an American. Well, I love the way you say that. It's a classic for a reason, because the best writers, they know what they're doing. And when they write, even if they didn't intend for it to be as big as it is, there's some impact.

There's emotional impact in their story. Well, the best writer, I mean, we're talking about Louisa May Alcott who wrote this book. G.K. Chesterton said, you know, she's a great writer, maybe not as good as a Jane Austen.

Okay, that's the way he frames it. But on her own right, she is a tremendous writer. And so she wrote this in 1968. Now keep in mind, Alcott was writing from the age of eight, publishing from the age of eight. She published some poetry and then occasionally she had some books published and then Civil War broke out in 1861 and she went to serve as a nurse.

In six weeks, she got sick with typhoid fever and had to be hospitalized. And while hospitalized, she wrote these sketches on life inside the hospital called Hospital Sketches, which was published in 1863 and got some attention because people were like, we love the way this girl writes, whoever she is. And then she kept on writing under pseudonyms, A.M. Barnard.

She wrote novels under those names and they were kind of racy novels, you know, nothing like Little Women, racy, kind of like the play within the play, right? What is it? The Witch's Curse. The Witch's Curse.

They were sort of like that. Wow. Come follow me. We die tonight. Oh, my lady love. Lady love, yeah.

Death to my foe. Yeah, they were like that. And then in 1868, towards the end of the Civil War, right, Thomas Niles, a publisher, approached her kind of on the prodding of Alcott's father to write a small lively novel for little girls or young girls. At first she said no. She said, I never liked girls and I don't know any other than my own sisters and older sister, Anna, younger sisters, Lizzie and May.

Other than that, I don't know anybody. But then reluctantly, she began writing and she completed the first half of the novel. Get ready for this, 402 pages. To this day, there are societies based on Louisa May Alcott's work, Little Women.

There are people who are writing papers. There are edited works, but different scholars in English literature who have written papers on different aspects of this work and it is still amazing what a great job she did and how she put things together. Nothing like the Bible, okay?

We know the Bible is the word of God and it's on a whole different plane. But this is very good. And so for her to do this, she was exhausted. She literally collapsed. And what she didn't realize and what people didn't realize is in the first two weeks they printed about 2,000 copies sold out. Wow. Sold out in two weeks.

In two weeks. And people fell in love with this family going through the ravages of the Civil War. This father, mother, four girls, and they especially fell in love with Jill Marsh, this free-thinking girl who was hot-tempered, on one hand, kind of avoiding that stereotypical feminine perfection, but on the other hand, she is so nostalgic. She doesn't want things to change. She wants her family to stay the same way. Everybody grows up and we still are in the attic making little dramas and plays and having fun in the snow.

She didn't want to grow up. I think that's really interesting that you say that because it would be really easy to look at a character like Joe and just be like, see, even now she wishes she was a boy. But that's so surface.

That's a very surface way to look at it. And it's a way to put modern day, and I'm using quote, morals onto a character that that's not what it was about. It was about her not wanting to grow up. People want to steal these characters, and what we're doing is we're kind of reclaiming them and saying, no, let's go back to the context. Let's go back to the history.

Let's go back to what was really intended, and we're not going to let somebody else steal it and make it something other than what the author intended. Her wanting to be boyish is representative of that freeness and innocence of childhood. One thing I was looking at during the plays, she's seeing that her sisters are growing up around her. And she hates it.

And so when you have to do those womanly things, I think even now women kind of have to mature faster than men do. And so she's rebelling against that. She doesn't want to grow up, and that's the heart of who she is. Everything was a reminder to her of time just passing right before her. She even says, there's a line in the play that Joe says, she says, I wish wearing flat irons on our heads would keep us from growing up.

And right on the heels of that is Meg coming in, her older sister in the show, Meg, who comes in and talks about how she's writing a letter to Papa, and she has this romantic interest that is courting her as well. And it's just a reminder to Joe that time is like slipping through her fingers. She sees that when boys grow up and mature, there's still that carefreeness.

They get to go off to war, which we know war is not a fun time. But there's that camaraderie. It's kind of romanticized for her. There's that camaraderie. There's that friendship, that bond. There's still that innocence when men grow up, and she sees the women around her not having that, but I see where people can be very tempted to say, see, she just wishes she was a boy. It's like, you are not looking into it. No, that's not true.

You're very surfacey, and people who are doing that are no different than pickpockets who are taking things away from other people. Now this is a semi-autobiographical account, as you know. Alcott grew up in Concord, Massachusetts. Her father was a transcendentalist. Now transcendentalism was a 19th century movement among writers and philosophers. And you know Emerson, right? Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. These are people who were transcendentalists.

And it was kind of like an idealistic movement that focused on the unity of all creation, the inborn goodness of humanity, sort of focusing on your insight rather than logic. Forget about logic. What do you feel? How do you feel?

What do you think? Because you have the answer. Of course, this movement fell apart because no, we don't know. Right.

Anyone who's honest with themselves would tell you that. Right. We are sinners by nature. We're born dead in trespasses and sins. No, we cannot just live independent of everybody, just take a walk in the woods.

No, we can't do that. We need God to take a walk in the woods with us. We need Christ in our lives. Her father was sort of eccentric, they were in a commune for a while, started a school, very weird ideas in the school. So it kind of fell apart and the family really suffered even to the point of starvation. But nonetheless, they grew up loving each other and they had profound respect for mom and dad. I know mom, Mrs. March is known as Marmee, they love their mom.

And of course, that's a lesson for us too, there should be respect for our parents. Now the various episodes in this Little Women are loosely based on the four sisters. Of course, Joe is Alcott herself. Meg is based on our older sister, Anna, who loved acting. Beth is based on her sister, Lizzie, who caught scarlet fever and lived for a while.

Heather then died at the age of 22 and Amy was based on May, who loved painting and went off to Europe to learn painting and all that. So that's who she is. And then this was a time where women's rights were coming to the surface and women could not have much, many opportunities other than maybe teaching, go be a teacher, but they want to do more. And the more would be like, just go ahead and be a reformer, go for against slavery or be for temperance or something like that or prison reform.

That's about all you can do. And Joe March or Miss Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, what she's trying to do is to say, no, I want to do more than that, I want to be a writer. So this is really a story of her life. I mean, even the name March, her family name was May, so she went another month, so she chose March.

So it's kind of funny, everything is kind of laid out that way. One thing that you said during the prologue to the play, during the foreword, and I think this is something that you've said on the show before, but that we often think that so history was not kind to women and it's because of things that we see even presented in scripture. We say that the Bible, or not we say, but people will say that the Bible put women down or kept women in their place, so to speak. And that's not true.

Where Christianity went, it elevated the status of women. Now for me, it's a special story because it reminds me of the many memories of growing up. I can still to this day remember walking down the hallway and hearing the girls laugh in their rooms or seeing, looking out the window as I'm sitting in my recliner and studying and watching Nicholas and Thomas and Abigail and Rebecca playing on the little, the swings and all, do you remember that, or running after the dog or whatever. I even remember some of those tough times when I had surgery and all the kids were concerned and when the dog died and all, I mean, these are all parts of growing up and you know, the reminder for us is that life changes.

That's true. The message there is that life changes, but Jesus never changes. Yeah, I know I'm in that stage of parenthood right now where my kids are at such a young age, it's almost easy to trick yourself into thinking that they're the constant in my life. You know what I mean? They're the rock that'll never change, but Gavin already is three years old, he's growing up. Isn't that crazy?

It's insane. So we have to know that things will change, but if we have a constant in life, then we can face any change that will come our way and learn how to adapt to that. If you have nothing constant, then you will really struggle. There are a lot of people who really struggle when life changes. For us, yeah, we've gone through some struggles, but nothing like that because Christ is at the center of our lives.

So as long as we hang on to him, we can navigate through anything. I guess the question is, and this is the final question because I know we're about to run out of time, but after the play, do you feel like you understand women? Absolutely not. I still don't, especially the younger women, you know, like when the girls were like really young, it was fun.

They would do this. Okay. Come here. Okay. Can you go get me that? Yeah.

Hey, you want to play this? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm scared of that.

You know, it was very predictable. And then they hit that age. I don't know if it's a middle school or whatever it is where all of a sudden it's like, I don't get them. What's going on here? Yeah. Something has shifted and that shift doesn't come back until like 30 years of age.

So you go, what happened? Now there are times they're fun and normal, but then there are times they're like, I don't get it. Now, I want to quote from G.K. Chesterton, I mentioned him earlier. He said this about a little women in his reviews, a great book, by the way, he reviews different authors. He said, I cannot understand the strange and simple world of women in which unselfishness is natural, in which spite is easier than self-indulgence. You remember the spite in the novel? What is a spite?

When Amy, little sister, gets mad at Joe for not being included, and then she throws Joe's notebook, her precious stories in the fireplace. Yeah. That's crazy. And with spite is easier than self-indulgence. I am the male intruder, like poor Laurie. And I withdraw.

I back out hastily bowing, but I'm sure that I leave a very interesting world behind me. Wow. What a powerful line.

That's a good review. Because men and women are different, and that should be celebrated, not neutralized. Right now in America, in the West, there is a war against women. And I feel sad for women because some of them are buying into that, and I'm like, no, this is a war against you. This is a war against you to not only enter into sports, but everywhere else. And we should stand up for women and say, no, they're different, they're special, and they are fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

Yeah, you should never feel empowered by this movement because they're literally tricking you into fighting their battle for them. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the other staff members, they were all part of making this possible. Yeah, it was a huge team effort, and I cannot say thank you enough to everyone in the room, especially you, Dr. Asad, not just for setting up the theater ministry and for pushing us forward in that direction, but for being an excellent Mr. March. Thank you.

I was a chaplain on the union side. And I think some people are writing into the show, they want to know, will the beard make a reappearance? Maybe in real life. We'll throw some pictures up so people can see them. Yeah. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, if you have questions or suggestions for new topics, maybe you learned more about Little Women and you'd like to learn more about the book and where you can purchase a copy and how it applies to your life, write in and let us know 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Don't forget that you can partner with us financially on that same website. Also, I want to encourage you to go over and check out MightyMuscadine.com and grab some of those products. Use promo code today, that's T-O-D-A-Y, for a sweet little discount on your purchase.

That's right, and every single dollar that you spend with them supports us here at the Clearview Today Show, so thank you for shopping with MightyMuscadine.com. That's right. What's coming up on tomorrow's episode? Tomorrow, we are talking about just some of those pagan roots that Christmas has. I mean, you guys know, y'all already know the Saturnalia Festival, the Winter Solstice, all this stuff.

Christians just kind of stole that stuff, right? Wrong. We were right on. Getting so tired of people saying that, we're going to talk about that a little bit more on tomorrow's show.

That's right. Can't wait for that discussion. Love you guys. I'll see you in Clearview today. See you guys. You