Whom Do You Love More?

Tim Challies recently posted about a question his children asked him: "Daddy, who do you love more, Mommy or us?" Tim writes, "I thought for just a moment and told them the truth. They cried." They cried because Tim answered honestly (and correctly in my estimation) that he loves his wife more. He tried to explain how that's the way it is supposed to be, and how it's better for them, and how one day they would understand more fully.

I commend the post to you, and I don't want to duplicate Tim's reasoning here. What has been just as interesting as the original post are the comments. Many have commented in support of how Tim handled things, but there have been many posts criticizing Tim's answer. Most of the criticisms have centered around priorities and love not going together, or around undermining a child's sense of being loved unconditionally. I'm repeating my comments in modified form here, not to replace but to support and supplement what Tim has already written.

The love between a husband and wife is a high and holy thing. Marriage is called something that God has brought about, that God has joined together and man is not to divide (Matt 19:6), a one flesh relationship of leaving and cleaving (Gen 2:24). Christian marriage is instituted by God to reveal something of the relationship of Christ and His Church (Eph 5:22-33). Note that when Christ says that He came not to bring peace but division within families, the relationship that He leaves unmentioned is the relationship between husband and wife (Matt 10:34-39).

Where in all of Scripture is the love between parent and child put on the same level as that between husband and wife? An appeal to the love between the Father and Son will not suffice — analogies with intertrinitarian relationships break down and should not be pressed further than Scripture itself presses them.

I shared with my wife the question Tim's children asked, and her response was, “I hope he said that he loved his wife more.” My wife and I agree that our daughter needs to know that our love for God is ultimate and our love as husband and wife penultimate for at least four reasons. One, it’s biblical. Two, her own sense of love and security rests in part on her sense of the strength and devotion present in our marriage. Three, she is a sinner and will eventually try to split us to get what she wants. It’s part of what children do. And four, the day will come when our daughter leaves home. My love for my wife preceded my daughter, and it will continue after she moves out. My priority must be my wife. These last two points are made particularly well by Carolyn Mahaney in her book Feminine Appeal.

Perhaps some think it overanalytical to prioritize, or that to prioritize means we do not love our children unconditionally. Think of what that would mean for understanding the Greatest Commandments! To see God as our first love would mean that we do not love our neighbor wholeheartedly or unconditionally? Simply taking that sort of reasoning to its logical conclusions shows that priorities do not lessen love or make it conditional somehow.

I do not want ever to need to choose between God and wife, between God and children, between wife and children. But I live in a fallen world. I am a fallen man. My wife is fallen, and my daughter is fallen. So I must think these things through, and make my priorities, before times of trouble come. So God, wife, children it is.