Who do you love more?

In this post (linked to, once again, by Nicole) Tim Challies asks the question: who should we love more - our kids or our spouse? Challies argues that he loves his wife more than he loves his kids, and that this is right. And maybe it is.

I agree that there's a primacy about the husband-wife love. They loved each other before the kids came into the world and it's their continuing love for each other that holds things together and provides a secure home for the children. But. Isn't it silly to compare love for spouse with love for kids as if the loves were the same? Apples and oranges surely. Or at least, oranges and mandarins.

There is an innate love that a mother (at least) feels for her child, a fierce desire to protect, such that she would unthinkingly throw herself under a bus to save him or her. And the death of a child is something that a parent never really gets over. One can (I'm told) come to a point of closure over losing a spouse, but not so a son or daughter. With this in mind it seems unnatural to assert that you love your spouse more than your kids. What is this 'love' that you are speaking of?

A couple more things...

• is the question actually different for men and women? Ephesians 5 tells husbands to love their wives and give up their lives for them. Wives are not specifically asked to love their husbands - but to honour, respect, obey them. Perhaps the father-child relationship is actually more similar to the husband-wife relationship than the mother-child relationship is to the wife-husband relationship. Any thoughts on this?

• In situations of an abusive father, I think it would be quite unhelpful for a wife to have it in her head that she needs to love her husband more than her kids. The safety of the kids should come way before any affection she feels for her husband.

• I'm hesitant to write this one, so I'll put it in a small font so maybe you won't see it... It gets on my nerves that some men (thankfully not the wonderful one I'm married to) use this kind of argument to demand more sex from their overworked and tired wives. Such men need to think about what it actually means for them to love their wives more than they love anything else (work, hobbies, newspapers, tv) and leave it to their wives to do their own thinking...
  

Overall, I do agree with Challies' basic idea. It's good that our kids understand that the primary relationship in the family is between mum and dad, not between mum (or dad) and them. In our home we try to find ways of expressing this, and often our kids don't like it - but we think that in the long run it makes them feel more secure and behave better as well.