Editor's note: Today's column points up how useful the Three Alternatives are in meeting the challenges of every day. It also introduces the need for the Third Alternative of "Synergicity." Last winter, during the "first half" of this column, Richard outlined and defined “The Three Deceivers” of Control, Ownership, and Independence, and detailed how our obsessions with them can ruin the quality of our lives. If you missed any of the earlier columns in this series, you can go to the Deceivers Archive (see right sidebar) to catch up. Then, in the the second phase of the column, he replaced the deceivers with "The Three Alternatives" of SERENDIPITY, STEWARDSHIP, and "SYNERGICITY." (See the Alternatives Archive). Richard is now well into the process of explaining each of the three Alternatives in detail. Now we move to the third alternative of "SYNERGICITY."

Introduction: The Three Deceivers may become a Meridian Book!

Before we get to today's column, let us pass on some potentially great news! Largely because of the amazing response from Meridian readers, The Three Deceivers may possibly become a book! So many of you have requested getting all the columns about the Three Deceivers and the columns about the Three Alternatives into one cover, that we are thinking seriously about doing it. Meridian's editors, Scot and Maurine Proctor, are becoming quite the publishers, and I like what they have done with other books (and I particularly like the idea of giving Meridian readers the first chance to obtain copies.)

Why don't you help us make this decision (whether or not to make The Three Deceivers into a book). If you have an interest, and would potentially like to have a copy if and when it is published, simply send me an email (richard@meridianmagazine.com). I will hold on to your emails, and if we do end up publishing, we will put all of you who have responded into a hat, have a drawing, and send free copies of the book to a selected number of you.

I know we are not done yet with the Three Alternatives that replace the Three Deceivers (we have covered Serendipity and Stewardship, but we still have Synergicity to deal with in the next few columns before we conclude. But I think you faithful readers have read enough to know whether you would like to see it all in a book, so drop me an e mail and tell me how you vote on the book possibility. While you are at it, give me any comments or thoughts you have so far on the idea and concept of "changing our minds" from the Three Deceivers to the Three Alternatives.

Many of you already have received or requested copies of my previous books Serendipity of the Spirit and Stewardship of the Heart, (they are in the mailing process now) which have been quoted extensively in this column, but if we do this new book will incorporate ALL of the Three Deceivers (how our obsessions with Ownership, Control and Independence are damaging the quality of our lives) AND ALL of the Three Alternatives (how Serendipity, Stewardship and Synergicity can rescue our souls and bring us into a spiritual paradigm that enhances our joy and protects our families.)

Having now announced the possibility of the book, let’s get back to the column. We concluded last week talking about spiritual stewardship, and next week we will begin the discussion of spiritual Synergicity. But for the rest of today's column, let me just mention some of the real-life benefits that readers are reporting from incorporating the Three Alternatives into their lives, and then let me more specifically introduce the third alternative of Synergicity.

The Three Alternatives as Parenting Techniques

I was with a friend the other day who was asking how I thought he could protect his children as they grow up on this crazy, mixed up, irresponsible and immoral world.

The conversation drifted to the Three Deceivers of Ownership, Control, and Independence, and we discussed how each of them, as they become obsessions, can derail lives and throw us off of the gospel track. They pull us away from dependence on the Lord, from reliance on the Spirit, and from remembering that He is in charge of all.

Then we began to think of the Three Alternatives as the solutions for so many of the worries he has about his kids. A young person who sees himself as a steward over his body is so much less likely to abuse it with drugs or early, recreational sex. One who learns to love the guidance of spiritual Serendipity is much more tuned in to the guidance and promptings that can warn and protect him. And anyone who grasps the idea of Synergicity will find the Lord's timing and power in his life when he needs it most.

Anyway, we began to explore the teaching and example of the Three Alternatives as parenting techniques! And it got very interesting.

Think about it. What do we need to protect our children from? Do we want to protect them from evil, from bad influences, from exposure to negative influences? Those are pretty impossible tasks in this media-driven world! Or are we better off trying to protect them from worldly attitudes and mindsets that make them susceptible to all these negative things?

If we let our kids become obsessed with the false spiritual concepts of Ownership, Control, and Independence, they become easy pickings for every temptation from drugs to sex to all kinds of rampant materialism and the false gods of status, style, and sophistication.

On the other hand, if we teach them (first and foremost by example) the true and gospel centered attitudes and paradigms of spiritual Serendipity, spiritual Stewardship, and spiritual Synergicity, we give them a perspective on the world that makes them much more immune from the temptations they face every day.

The Three Alternatives as Stress Relievers

Have you ever really explored the thought of where stress comes from? Ponder the possibility that most of it comes, and comes directly, from the Three Deceivers! Trying to control everything, and yet inevitably finding that most things are beyond our control, is a perfect recipe for frustration and stress.

Wanting to own more of everything, and fretting and worrying about all the things that we perceive that we own is the predictable cause of a great deal of stress.

And always trying to go it alone, to be independent, to need no one but ourselves is often the very thing that makes the stress unbearable, and cuts us off from the very help that we need.

The Three Alternatives, on the other hand, are each stress relievers. A Serendipity attitude allows us to accept what comes, and even see the good and the Divine in it, and to appreciate the beauty and opportunity of the unexpected. We embrace surprise rather than resisting and resenting it, and stress eases.

A Stewardship mentality reminds us that God is in charge, that He owns all, and that the steward's role is simply to do the best we can and seek His help. Stewardship thinking makes us happy with what we have and happy for what others have (our stewardships and theirs) and drains away the jealousy and pride that inevitably lead to stress.

And thinking Synergistically (as will be explained in coming weeks in this column) allows us to better see the wisdom of the Lord's timing and thus to be more patient and to understand that we are each part of each other's solutions and eases our burdens and our worries by spreading them across more people who work together for each other's good.

The Three Alternatives as Ways to Worship and to Attract the Spirit

We have commented extensively in earlier columns on how attitudes of Control, Ownership, and Independence drive away the Spirit and turn us more and more toward self. They are, in fact, though we usually don't realize it, three specific ways of denying God, or at least of denying our need for God's help.

The Three Alternatives, conversely, pull us toward the Divine because they are all dependent on Him and appreciative of Him, and focused on Him. Spiritual Serendipity looks for and acknowledges God's hand in everything, even the seemingly meaningless coincidences. Spiritual Stewardship seeks Him always because of thee implied acknowledgment of His ownership of all. And spiritual Synergicity, as future columns will elaborate, incorporates the truth that we are totally dependent on God and completely interdependent with our brothers and sisters. Thus we are pulled toward love for Him, and love for each other (the two first and great commandments.)

The Three Alternatives as Ways to be "In the World without being of the World"

I have always thought of this much used couplet as two strong and positive admonitions. Be in the world! Be involved, be informed, be part of what is happening, and be in a position where you can have positive influence. And yet, be not of the world! Avoid the worldly and everything that leads to the carnal at the expense of the spiritual.

The Three Deceivers deceive by turning both admonitions around, and thus making them damning instead of exalting. Be of the world, by trying to own as much of the world as you can, and gain control of as big a part of the world as possible, and keep whatever you get for yourself. And disengage from the parts of the world where there is nothing in it for you. Hoard what you have. You earned it and you own it, so keep it from others who didn't earn it. Be secretive and protective and keep things under your control. Be independent of standards that would tie you down.

The Three Alternatives keep us in the world, and involved in making the world around us better because they are made of awareness and perspective that sees broadly and empathizes freely. They cause us to see a little more as God sees, and take us even above ourselves to His vantage point wherein we all see and care about each other and seek to influence the world more than we are influenced by the world.

More on Synergicity Coming over the Next Few Weeks

Powerful as the concepts of Serendipity and Stewardship are, they reach neither their full power or their full joy without the third alternative. By themselves, Stewardship and Serendipity are concepts of the here and now, and of the individual mind. They need to be coupled with some sense of divine timing and of brothers and sisters linking and helping and sharing

Synergicity is the mindset that not only sees but that also relies on God's timing, and that understands that, in things of the spirit, one and one can equal much more than two.

I can't wait to get into it, starting next week here at Meridian.

Don’t forget to cast your "vote" on the idea of making the Three Deceivers and the Three Alternatives into a book (and get your name in for a possible free book) by writing to Richard@meridianmagazine.com.

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