In my new book, The 16 Strivings for God, I show how motives and values combine to make us individuals and then discuss how religion is designed psychologically for spiritual development.
BUT not every American took solace in the skyward-striving strains of "God Bless America".
From then on I just kept striving, and striving….
"They believed that through their labors the world around them could be perfected and thus redeemed, and so their strivings toward holiness, their gestures toward God, were enacted with their hands...
However: (c) as this conformity is not possible in this life, Kant posits one yet to come; and (d) since even in the life to come we still cannot achieve moral perfection, God then accepts this infinite striving as sufficient, taking it, through an act of grace, "as equivalent to possession".
In certain eras of church history the desire to establish the Kingdom of God stimulated political and social strivings.
This word, which literally means "striving," was usually cited in the Koranic phrase "striving in the path of God" and was interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of Muslim power.
As a spiritually striving Jew, I long to have the type of relationship with God that would allow me to not hesitate when faced with challenges.
Now, suppose that there were a supreme, eternal, all powerful, all knowing ruler of the universe (i.e., God); he could bring to completion our imperfect strivings for the highest good.
In works like "Apollo and Daphne" (1622-25) and "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa" (1645-52), superhumanly beautiful gods, angels and humans seem animated from within by a relentlessly striving life force.
