The Three Deceivers (By Richard Eyre)

Why I Wrote the Book

I am pleased to announce to you wonderful Meridian readers that my new book, The Three Deceivers, will start coming off the presses exactly one week from today and that it will, for a while, be available exclusively to Meridian readers.  It will include all of the material from the past columns that ran on Meridian by the same name, along with a lot of new material. 

I am excited about the book because I think it strikes at the heart of some of the things that contribute to our unhappiness and our frustration and because it pins down some subconscious obsessions that work against our joy.  Even more importantly, it gives us some alternatives that can lighten and enliven our souls by helping us make some corrections in what we prioritize and what we pursue.

In searching for a way to get you as excited about the book as I am, I remembered that I had mentioned, in one of those earlier Meridian articles, my "adventure in the bookstore" and how it led to the articles on The Three Deceivers and now to this new book. Many of you Meridian readers said you wanted the whole story of what happened in the bookstore that day, so here, as a way of announcing the book's publication, is the "rest of that story."

I have always had a fascination with the self-help section of bookstores.  It is always a BIG section, and I am always amazed at the number of authors and the number of titles that deal with the things we can do to make ourselves better, richer, happier, etc.  I am fascinated by the concept of "self-help" and the whole notion that we can essentially will ourselves, or discipline ourselves, or think ourselves into being better, having more, and gaining the things we want (or think we want). I'm fascinated by it, but I have some problems with it.

The problem I have with self-help is not with the methods or plans it suggests (like visualization, positive thinking, directed meditation, time management, or self-talk). These are all fine techniques.  I don't have a problem with the HOW.  What I have a problem with is the underlying assumptions about WHAT we want and what we think these methods will get for us or cause us to be able to obtain.  It's the implied GOALS that trouble me, not the PLANS for how to get them.

You see, I think that if someone uses self-help tools or techniques like imaging, or careful planning or just plain old hard work to pursue and obtain something--but if that something is the wrong thing-- then he would have been better off without the self help!

That Day in the Bookstore

So I had my suspicions about motives and the end-results of self help, but it wasn't until that day in the bookstore that I pinned them down (and that I decided to write this book!). 

Here's what happened:  I was in between meetings, and didn't have time to go home or back to the office before the next meeting, so I found myself with two or three hours to kill, and I also found myself across the street from a super sized Barnes and Noble.  I went in, found the massive self-help section, and started my simple research.  What I did was to just move through the whole section, row by row, with a yellow pad and a pencil, tallying up with tic marks how many books fit into each "category of pursuit."  Many were obvious by the title.  There were books on "how to double your income" or "getting the things you want" goal of more wealth and which clearly pointed toward the goal of more possessions.  There were titles about "gaining control" or "making your day go like you want it to" which obviously aimed at gaining more control.  Other books, with less explicit titles had to be opened up for a moment, but the table of contents usually revealed the underlying pursuit.  Chapters about “depending on yourself" or "getting over your dependencies" suggested the goal of more independence.

As I moved up and down the bookshelves, scanning titles, browsing tables of contents, thumbing through pages, those three themes kept emerging:  “Gaining more control , obtaining more ownership , finding more independence” .  There was never any defense of these three goals, they were simply assumed.  It was taken as a given that everyone wants them, and that our lives are better the more we have of them.

Of course, many of the books claimed they could give us more peace, or more happiness or less stress or hassle in our lives, but as I opened them and scanned some pages, I discovered that they had the same implications:  That if we can gain more control, or more ownership, or more independence, then we can be happier, or less stressed, or more fulfilled.

So there in that big bookstore, standing in the self-help aisle, sun streaming in on me from some high windows, I had a small epiphany.  More control, more ownership, and more independence are the WRONG goals.  Their pursuit draws us away from God and diminishes our relationships with other people, and denies the realities of the Lord's plan of unpredictability, consecration and interdependence. Control, Ownership and Independence (or CO&I as I began to call them in my mind) have entrenched themselves into our psyches and become the objects of our longings and our envy, maybe even of our worship.  They start as our perceived ideals and become our idols. They evolve into The Three Deceivers that trick us away from God and from His way.

Part of the problem, I realized, is that we live in a materialistic, physical world where most of our measurements are based on economic models.  Success is measured by accumulation, appearance, and abilities.  In the physical and emotional sense, control seems the answer to chaos, ownership is the motivation that drives enterprise, and independence implies the freedoms of democracy.  CO&I are good political and economic goals.

But they are bad spiritual goals!  We must remember that control is God's, that ownership is His, and that we are completely dependent on Him and interdependent with each other.  To find true happiness (joy) here and exaltation later, we need a set of spiritual goals that supersede the CO&I of this world.  We need three alternative attitudes or paradigms, three alternative ways to view the world and our place in it.

And the spiritual goals should overshadow and eclipse the economic and the physical.  We should be more interested in guidance than control, more drawn to service than to ownership, and more committed to humility than to independence. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how many of our actions and our thoughts (and certainly our efforts and our daily activities) are motivated by our conscious or subconscious pursuit of CO&I.....to the point where they completely overwhelm our much quieter and less manifesting spiritual instincts and desires.  I began to feel the need for clear, well understood ALTERNATIVES to each of The Three Deceivers .

So it started that day in the bookstore, and has continued over the last two years, manifesting itself first in the year long column here in Meridian , and now in a new book that has two sides.  Read from one side it exposes The Three Deceivers and systematically explains why we must not let them take over how we think.  Read from the other side, it lays out The Three Alternatives and defends them as a way to draw us closer to God and further away from the world.

How to Get It

Many of you Meridian readers have already read parts of the book by reading the earlier Meridian columns.  What I have discovered though, is that a piecemeal, one-article-at-a-time approach is not ideal or comprehensive in trying to change the very pattern of how we think about life.  A book is a better answer--something between two covers that can be read and marked and digested in a comprehensive way--and implemented progressively.  In many ways, I think that The Three Deceivers is the most important of the more than 30 books I have written.  It is certainly the one that I think has the most to do with the attitudes I try to have today, and with my own personal efforts to "be in the world but not of the world."

The book is now available to Meridian readers.  Click here to learn more and to find the ordering page.

And there's one more thing that I want you to know.  I am a great believer that the best way to find good books is from the recommendations of friends.  Most of what I read are books I picked up because someone told me I ought to read it or because I asked someone what he or she was reading and got an interesting recommendation. 

That is the way I want it to be with The Three Deceivers, we are taking a very unique marketing and distribution approach.  Instead of putting the book in bookstores (where it might get lost in that massive self help section) we are going to sell it exclusively online.