You Love Him More Than I Do

There is a scene somewhere in the second half of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life in which Fani Jägerstätter is praying for her husband, Franz, who is in prison and facing execution. Fani tells God, “You love him more than I do.” It is a moment of recognition that, if Franz should die for his faithfulness to God, it will not be because God abandoned him.

I don’t know if this line originated with Malick or if it came from his reading the real Franz and Fani’s letters. But in the past eleven months since I last watched the film, this statement, “You love him more than I do,” has been a comfort and help to me. 

The idea seems so obvious. If I am finite and God is infinite, He has an exponentially greater capacity for loving others than I do. Moreover, if am a sinner and God is holy, His love is pure and it is far wiser and more constant than mine. 

And yet, the idea that God loves my loved ones more than I do is hard to accept in practice. It is more intuitive to me, in my pride and from my limited frame of reference, to think that I know what would be the most loving thing to do for so-and-so—and for some reason God doesn’t see what I see and is failing to love so-and-so in that way. It also comes more naturally to me, when I don’t know what would be the most loving thing to do for so-and-so, to despair and think there is no remedy as he or she wanders in error or sinks deeper into suffering. I assume that if the situation is beyond me, it’s beyond God as well. I’ve also realized that I tend to think that if I don’t do something for so-and-so or pray to God and his or her behalf, so-and-so’s plight will escape God’s notice or fall further and further down His priority list. God is so busy managing the cosmos, after all, and if I don’t help him out with some of his minor administrative tasks, or if I don’t keep spamming his inbox with petitions, He may never get around to loving so-and-so in the way I think so-and-so needs to be loved. Indeed, I take for granted that if so-and-so’s sufferings increase, or if so-and-so departs from the faith or never receives the faith to begin with, I will be at fault because I did not love so-and-so enough to intervene in action and intercede in prayer at the most crucial moments. It sounds ridiculous to think this way once I say it loud, but this is how my mind works.      

“You love him more than I do” is an antidote to this way of thinking that, even though it purports to be about my love for others, is really more about propping up my skewed sense of my own importance.

First, it has made a difference in how I pray. Several times in the past eleven months, when my heart has ached over the situation of a loved one and how little I can do to help or don’t know where to start, God has graciously brought it to mind that He loves that person more than I do. If my heart, with its weak, imperfect love, aches for them, how much more is His heart, with its strong, perfect love, intensely moved for them—and not only moved, but moving to do something for them, even if I can’t see or understand it? If He is as all-powerful and all-wise as He is all-good, then can’t I trust Him to love them with that fierce, faithful, all-surpassing love of His in a way that will be truly best for them? When I remember this, it relieves me of the false burden of thinking I need to convince God to care about so-and-so or figure out for Him (presumptuous thought!) a strategic plan of response. Instead, when I don’t know what else to ask, I can pray, as Fani does in the film, “Lord, you love this person more than I do.” When I acknowledge that truth before God, I release the person into God’s care—or rather, acknowledge that the person was always in God’s care, not mine—and find myself more at peace.

Second, more recently I’ve realized that “You love him more than I do” is a counter to my over-scrupulosity and my paranoia about the possible effects of my actions or inaction, or what Faith Chang identifies as a Christian variation on perfectionism. In Chapter 7 of her helpful book Peace Over Perfection (The Good Book Company, 2024), Chang writes about how perfectionism can keep us from trusting God’s providence. Earlier I mentioned my fear that “I will be at fault because I did not love so-and-so enough to intervene in action and intercede in prayer at the most crucial moments.” Now, it is true that people bear responsibility for others, including their souls, but Chang reminds us that, “though Scripture affirms both human responsibility and God’s providence as equally real, they are not equal in influence. The Christian’s future is not ultimately determined by her own power to always know and do what is right but by the gracious providence of God” (p. 119). That’s good news! If it weren’t so, we would all be doomed—and doomed to doom others by our shortcomings and failures to love them well enough. Chang goes on to say that “it is the love of God for those I love which anchors me when I’m tossed around by regret and fear—his love and his power to accomplish his perfect will, in spite of my weaknesses” (p. 124). Thus, when I trust that God’s love for others is greater than mine, I can still take responsibility for loving them as well as I can, but I can do so without suffering under the debilitating presumption that my failure to love them could separate them from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). 

When I was reading this chapter a few weeks ago, the phrase “the love of God for those I love” immediately reminded me of Fani’s prayer in A Hidden Life. In fact, at the end of the chapter Chang includes “A Prayer for When You Fear Missing the Way (and for All That’s Left Undone),” which includes this almost-identical statement: “You love these dear ones more than I do” (p. 130). I wonder if Chang has seen the film. Either way, she confirms the liberating power of acknowledging this simple yet profound truth.

Admirers and Followers

Here’s a rule of thumb: whenever an artist, storyteller, or some other creative type shows up in a narrative and talks about his or her craft, pay attention if you want insight into the writer’s own beliefs about why we tell stories—and the responsibilities, possibilities, and potential pitfalls this entails.

For example, re-watching Terrence Malick’s film A Hidden Life (2019) the other day, I was struck again by the scene in which Franz Jägerstätter observes the painter, Ohlendorf, adding or touching up images in the chapel of the village. If Malick ever made an autobiographical statement about his vocation in a film, it would be here.

Ohlendorf acknowledges there is a danger that stories can leave people unmoved while giving them the false assurance that they have been moved. He says, “I paint the tombs of the prophets. I help people look up from those pews and dream. They look up and they imagine if they lived back in Christ’s time they wouldn't have done what the others did. They wouldn't have murdered those whom we now adore.” That is, the biblical stories he paints on the walls could confirm people in their complacency rather than shaking them out of it. 

But the work he does also poses a danger for the painter himself. “I paint all this suffering,” he says, “but, I don't suffer myself. I make a living of it.” While he “paint[s] their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head,” he can profit off the pleasant, uncomplicated feelings it creates in the viewers. Ohlendorf, like any other storyteller, could be praised for being a truth-teller while never saying anything that upsets the lies people love to tell themselves. And, if he wasn’t honest with himself, he’d be in danger of deceiving himself that he has experienced “what I haven't lived.” This is why he hasn’t “venture[d]” to “paint the true Christ.” He doesn’t want to fool anyone, especially not himself, that because he has created a portrayal of Christ he knows something about following the true Christ. He worries about letting himself off the hook, just like he is worried his paintings let viewers off the hook. Making or receiving art about Christ cannot fulfill or exempt from the “demand” that “Christ’s life” makes upon everyone.

Through Ohlendorf, then, Malick is challenging us, and challenging himself. We could be inspired by Franz and Fani’s sacrifices to resist Hitler for the sake of Christ, and go right on paying to Caesar what isn’t Caesar’s to maintain our comfortable lives. Malick and his collaborators could be tempted to think that, because they have poured so much care and thought into telling us Franz and Fani’s story, they have been changed by it as a matter of course.

But while Ohlendorf’s words caution that stories—even good, true, noble ones!—can be used to insulate us from the call to practice hard virtues, his words also suggest they can nudge us toward answering that call. Notice I used the word ‘nudge,’ not ‘push.’ It’s very easy for storytellers and the popularizers of stories (critics, teachers) to overstate their importance, to believe things like, “If only we could put the right stories before audiences, the culture would change!” For one thing, the Parable of the Sower tells us that even the truest and best story of all, the gospel, often falls on unreceptive ground. How much slimmer are the odds that any man-made story could change a heart!

Appropriately skeptical, then, Ohlendorf’s view of the storyteller’s role is modest, restricted. He says, “What we do, is just create—sympathy. We create—we create admirers. We don't create followers.” Some might hear those lines as a dismissal of storytelling, or art generally; if it can’t create followers, if all it can do is create sympathetic admirers, it can’t be worth much. But before someone can become a follower, he must first become an admirer of the person to be followed. And how does one become an admirer? Through sympathy. And sympathy is what narratives are so very good at creating. Stories are empathy-workouts. They draw us into caring deeply about characters, sometimes like us and sometimes very unlike us.  

It’s significant, surely, that it’s after this meeting with the painter that Franz makes his final resolution to turn himself in for refusing to make an oath to Hitler. I’d suggest the painter’s images and words prompted him to consider, in a new or sharper light, the true Christ. The painter stirred Franz’s sympathy for the sufferings of Christ—and perhaps spurred a recognition that Christ will reciprocally sympathize with him in his sufferings for His sake—and this sparked a greater admiration for Christ, and that compelled Franz to follow Christ, even unto death. The painter didn’t make Franz a follower of the true Christ, but he did help make him a greater admirer. And that counts for something.

As a former filmmaker, an amateur film critic, and a scholar (and soon-to-be teacher) of literature, all my life I’ve been asking why stories matter. Does it make a difference what kinds of stories we tell or receive? What can our stories do in the world? The answer Malick gives to these questions, in this scene, is that stories shape our affections. That’s what sympathy and admiration are: expressions of what we love. Once an affection becomes strong enough, through repeated exposure to a story or a set of similar stories, actions will follow. This is why it matters which stories we tell ourselves. For a negative example, look no further than the mayor of Franz’s village, who spews hatred because he has been shaped by the mythology of Hitler. 

Watching A Hidden Life will not, in and of itself, inspire someone to follow the Jägerstätters’ example. But if the film, in concert with other stories about sacrifice, can establish sympathy and then compel admiration, maybe some day they will have followers.