Publisher's note: Perhaps the three most pursued and coveted things in our modern world are control, ownership, and independence. In Richard Eyre's mind, they are the three deceivers — and are, in this life, both unobtainable and undesirable. They are, Eyre believes, the "false gods" that separate us from Heavenly Father and rob us of the things of the spirit. This column, exploring the obsessions we have developed with “CO&I”, and later outlining a better and more spiritual alternative for each, will open you to a new world of thinking that may change how you live. Richard welcomes your feedback and inputs. Take a guess at what you think the Three Alternatives are. Write to him at Richard@meridianmagazine.com . If you missed any of the four earlier columns in this series, you can go to the Deceivers Archive (see right sidebar) and catch up.

Introduction

Today’s column is a little long, but extremely important because it sets forth the framework within which the Three Alternatives will be presented next week. I will break it up and sub-divide it with a lot of subheadings to make it easier. If you can take the time to digest today’s column, the Three Alternatives will be much more meaningful to you when they are laid out in next week’s column.

Four Objectives and New Name Coming

Starting next weekend, this column will be called The Three Alternatives instead of The Three Deceivers.

When the column began 12 weeks ago, I had four objectives:

We have now finished the first objective, and if you are still reading, perhaps it means that you have “seen through” the veneer of CO&I and are ready for better and truer alternatives. Today’s column is all about number 2, because it is important to have a good frame of reference for the three new attitudes or approaches to life that will be presented next week. (A “frame” sets something off, holds it together, and presents it in its clearest and most attractive light, and that is what I want to do with the three alternatives, so bear with me! More on the concept of a framework later in today’s column)

The “Good Things” about the Three Deceivers

I have criticized and put down the concepts of CO&I so strongly over the past several weeks, that what I am going to say now will surprise many of you: Control, Ownership, and Independence are an important part of God’s plan for His children. Just as they are (or should be) a part of our goals for our children.

Think about it. As we raise our kids, we want them to learn to control many things — their tempers, their money, their habits. We want them to assume ownership, and thus learn responsibility for their toys, their clothes, their education, their decisions. And we want them, gradually, to achieve the kind of independence where they don’t need us anymore (in a sense, the goal of parenting is to work yourself out of a job!)

Could God’s goal be similar with regard to His children? Heavenly Father wants us to progress, and mortality is a part of His plan for achieving that — for moving us along a path that leads to us being more and more like Him (and He, of course, has fully achieved Control of all, Ownership of all, and can operate in a sphere of complete Independence.) In our pre mortal state, living with Him, we had little need (perhaps little concept) of CO&I, and this earth life opens their possibilities to us.

So if CO&I is what we all want to teach our children, and what God wants to teach us, how can they be the Three Deceivers?

Simply because we take each of them too far, and fail to understand them as gradual, progressive gifts of God.

If we deceive ourselves by thinking we can control what only God can control, or own what only God owns, or if we feign independence from Him on whom we depend for every breath, we misunderstand the pace of God’s plan and forfeit the very help we must have from Him to become what we need to be in order to receive these gifts in eternity.

On this earth, options and agency are given to us so that we can begin to learn, like children, to choose and decide wisely. Mortality thus becomes a training school for the skills and discernment that will one day afford us control. On this earth, we are entrusted with things that teach us responsibility and prepare us for a time when we will, like God, have ownership. On this earth we are given the freedom and agency that can prepare us for independence.

Like children in school, we have many progression possibilities, but the Teacher is the one with the knowledge and the power, and we must learn from Him and depend on Him and acknowledge his sole control and ownership and independence. We cannot simply possess or assume these things; we can only learn and receive them from Him according to His timing and His curriculum.

The Three Deceivers deceive us not because they are inherently and eternally wrong, but because we can get their timing wrong.

Levels

Think with me for a moment about “levels.” There are three basic levels of law by which men and women on this earth can live.

Sometimes these three levels of law are associated with the Telestial, Terrestrial, and Celestial Kingdoms, but not altogether accurately, since we know all three kingdoms are kingdoms of glory, and thus must all possess elements of atonement. But certainly Christ’s laws and teachings are the highest level of law and bring the deepest joy and peace.

This column is not about these levels of law, but it is about somewhat similar levels of attitude, or paradigm, or perspective. The level of how we view the world and how we see ourselves within the world makes a great deal of difference regarding our happiness and even regarding the level of law we are capable of (and feel natural within).

Wrong and spiritually immature attempts to control others and to make everything happen the way we want it to put us in the jungle. So do coveting and pride and wanting to own more than others own. And the jungle is all about independently surviving at the expense of others. We know there are much higher laws, and we learn of them in the gospel and in the temple. What are the attitudes and approaches to life that can allow us to live by them in this telestial world? How can we be in this world but not of it?

Plans of Dependence and Independence

Let’s step back for a minute and take a little different perspective. CO&I can’t be that bad. After all, they were at least an implied part of the plan of agency presented to us all in the pre existence. And, in one way of thinking, the opposing plan presented by Satan was the opposite. He wanted us to be dependent on him and to put our fate in his hands

God’s plan, to some extent, put our fate in our hands and gave us agency and choice for now, with the chance to gain independence, ownership and control at a future point in our eternity.

God’s plan contemplated a movement toward independence; Satan’s was based on a kind of forced dependence.

God’s plan included an earth, and a mortality not where we would have agency, options, choices, and consequences that would allow us to progress and become, little by little, more like Him. Satan, having lost the vote and been cast out, now has many counter-plans, all aimed at disrupting the Plan. One of these counter-plans is to deceive us into thinking that we already have what in fact we are only in training for. The more we think that we already have, or should want and do anything to get CO&I, the more we will be centered on self and the less we will be centered on the Lord and His spirit.

Children

Many parents try to raise responsible kids by giving their children the early illusion of ownership and control and independence. We might give our young kids allowances so they can buy things and think of them as their own and thus take better care of them. We might give preschoolers the choice of which shirt to wear or what color of juice to have in the morning so they can begin to feel some independence and control.

But of course they are still children, still completely dependent on us as their parents. And there is so much more to teach them.

This earth gives us, as children of God, our first illusions of control and ownership and independence, and the agency and choices we have here facilitate our progression, but how important it is to humbly recognize how totally dependent we are on Him, to acknowledge His ownership of all, and to put our lives in His control.

Both

There are some parallels with the classic argument between “works” and “grace.” One view (most of Christianity, actually) says, with scriptural backing, that “it is by grace ye are saved,” and the other view favors the scripture “faith without works is dead.”

Are we saved by works of by grace? The answer, of course, is both. Those who say works only miss the fact of our complete dependency on Christ’s atonement, and those who say grace only miss the point of agency and the purpose of this progressing mortality.

Only the balanced “both” position brings happiness and maximized progress. The extreme and exclusive “grace” position can make us fatalistic and lazy. And the extreme and exclusive “works” position can make us proud, demanding, and frustrated.

We need to find a similar balance in our everyday lives between the self-reliant attitudes of CO&I and the God and Spirit-reliant attitudes of Faith, Hope and Charity.

Paradigms

What are Control, Ownership and Independence? Are they goals? Are they principles? Are they attitudes? Are they approaches to life? Are they beliefs? Are they lenses through which we view the world? Are they ideals or idols which we worship?

It’s hard to replace something if you are not entirely sure what it is. Like parts in an automobile or machine, you have to know what something is and what it does before you can replace it correctly and accurately.

I don’t think CO&I are principles or values or precepts, and they are certainly not commandments. They are concepts or attitudes, and they have become, for most people in the world, goals and objectives, the objects of our pursuit. For many, they have become the idols we worship. Perhaps the best thing to call them, the word that combines all of these “things that they are” is paradigms.

The dictionary defines “paradigm” as “A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.” That is really what we have with CO&I. They constitute a way of looking at life, a set of assumptions about what we should be wanting and about what makes us happy — concepts that determine where we spend our energy and that are instrumental in determining our values and our practices.

False paradigms are dangerous because they stem from false assumptions and lead to false values and practices. False paradigms (or half-truth paradigms) are an enormously effective tool of Satan because once they are established and accepted in our minds, they can lead to all kinds of mistakes, wrong priorities, and sins.

The two ways to get rid of false paradigms are to debunk, expose, and abandon them (the attempt of the first 12 columns in this series) and to replace them (the attempt of the columns that will follow, and the Three Alternatives)

A paradigm can be replaced only with an alternative paradigm. You cannot replace a paradigm with a principle, because they are not the same thing. If you are replacing a faulty carburetor, you have to replace it with another (good, working, improved) carburetor, or maybe with a fuel injection system — something that does the same job better. Similarly, if we are going to replace a paradigm, it had better be with another paradigm — one that incorporates true principles and that leads to where God wants us to be.

The Three Deceivers are a framework for life, a way of looking at things, and it is this frame that must be replaced.

The Leading “Guesses”: Faith, Hope, and Charity (why these are NOT the Three Alternatives)

Thousands of Meridian readers have responded to this column with hundreds of “guesses” about the Three Alternatives. The most common guess (as you saw in last week’s sampling of reader responses) and in many ways the best guess, has been Faith, Hope, and Charity. These are, of course, the most important and powerful principles of the Gospel, and putting them into practice is the goal of every true Christian and would certainly dispel the negative and self-centering tendencies of the Three Deceivers.

But they do not directly replace CO&I because they are principles rather than paradigms.
What we need as replacements are three separate new paradigms, one to replace each of the three deceivers. We need three new ways to view the world around us, three new approaches to living out each day, three new frameworks in which we can see ourselves and our lives on this earth, three new ways of dealing with the materialism and shallowness and selfishness around us. And they must be paradigms in which faith, hope and charity can work and flourish and grow!

Things as They Really Are

One of Elder Maxwell’s books is named Things as They Really Are (taken from Jacob in the Book of Mormon). A true paradigm or set of paradigms would represent things as they really are — the realities of our dependence on God and of His ownership and control of all. A true paradigm would allow us to see as He wants us to see and to progress toward what he wants us to be. True paradigms would take into account where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. True paradigms would be frameworks in which Faith, Hope and Charity along with all other true principles of the Gospel could flourish.

The Three Alternatives should be a set of attitudes or perspectives or paradigms that help prepare us to be like God, and to gain some of His characteristics, and yet, at the same time, that acknowledges the correct current reality of His complete control, total ownership, and entire independence and our own humble lack of any of the three

Are there three perspectives or paradigms that can make this earth the preparation it should be for living with God and sharing in some of His privileges and prerogatives and yet that keep us in the humility and receptive mode that allow us to draw down his help and comfort? Can they contain the faith of seeing what can someday be, but the humility recognizing how FAR we still have to go?

I hate to say “join me next week to find out,” but I guess that is what I am saying. In the meantime, before next Friday, based on the new information in today’s column, take your last guesses at by writing to me at Richard@meridianmagazine.com. Your responses up to how have been an invaluable help in writing this column, and I hope you will continue.

This is no small thing we are looking for together. We are seeking “bridges” that can allow us to live in the world without being of the world. We are seeking attitudes that maximize our progression on this earth as measured by how close we get to God while we are here. We are seeking paradigms that rid us of false gods and point us toward the eternities.

To take a guess on what The Three Alternatives are, or to express your ideas or feedback, write to Richard@meridianmagazine.com As you make your own search for the Three Alternative, or as you send them in to me, remember that they must preserve all of the good aspects of CO&I (initiative, discipline, responsibility and so on) but eliminate all of the negative aspects (judgment, jealousy, conceit, presumption, envy, covetousness, and other deceiving and damaging qualities). The Three Alternatives must draw us closer to God rather than distancing us from Him.