Wanting to be good obviously isn't enough to be good. I'm not sure what "perfectly good" is.
And figuring out what "good" is (even fair-to-middling good) is an ongoing process.
It's not that desire to be good is enough by itself--it's that Sparks has set up a system where nothing anyone human can do is good enough.
I think connotation matters--"evil compared to God" may be logically equivalent to "less good than God", but the first implies deep defect and culpability and the latter doesn't.
I'm reminded of a bit from the Divine Comedy. A woman in the heaven of Venus (one of the lower heavens) explains that she doesn't envy souls in the higher heavens because she has as much bliss as her nature can hold. I don't remember whether Dante takes the arguement further, but it seems that she doesn't want more because the only way she could get more would be to cease to be the same person. She isn't defective, she's just someone in particular.
(no subject)
And figuring out what "good" is (even fair-to-middling good) is an ongoing process.
It's not that desire to be good is enough by itself--it's that Sparks has set up a system where nothing anyone human can do is good enough.
I think connotation matters--"evil compared to God" may be logically equivalent to "less good than God", but the first implies deep defect and culpability and the latter doesn't.
I'm reminded of a bit from the Divine Comedy. A woman in the heaven of Venus (one of the lower heavens) explains that she doesn't envy souls in the higher heavens because she has as much bliss as her nature can hold. I don't remember whether Dante takes the arguement further, but it seems that she doesn't want more because the only way she could get more would be to cease to be the same person. She isn't defective, she's just someone in particular.