Amos (John Mark’s friend)

• overprotected by parents; not dependable

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

177:2.3“Love, John, is the su­preme re­al­ity of the uni­verse when be­stowed by all-wise be­ings, but it is a dan­ger­ous and of­ten­times semi­selfish trait as it is man­i­fested in the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tal par­ents. When you get mar­ried and have chil­dren of your own to rear, make sure that your love is ad­mon­ished by wis­dom and guided by in­tel­li­gence.

177:2.4“Your young friend Amos be­lieves this gospel of the king­dom just as much as you, but I can­not fully de­pend upon him; I am not cer­tain about what he will do in the years to come. His early home life was not such as would pro­duce a wholly de­pend­able per­son. Amos is too much like one of the apos­tles who failed to en­joy a nor­mal, lov­ing, and wise home train­ing. Your whole af­ter­life will be more happy and de­pend­able be­cause you spent your first eight years in a nor­mal and well-reg­u­lated home. You pos­sess a strong and well-knit char­ac­ter be­cause you grew up in a home where love pre­vailed and wis­dom reigned. Such a child­hood train­ing pro­duces a type of loy­alty which as­sures me that you will go through with the course you have be­gun.”