Training Wheels

Jesus is many things. 

He is our Lord, Savior, Teacher, Brother, and Friend.

You know what He isn’t?

Training wheels.

At least not in the way we normally use them.

I’ve been working on the virtue of fortitude for the past few years. I’ve mistakenly assumed that it involves me sucking it up and becoming tougher, more…”manly.” I thought the end goal was me being able to fight and win all battles alone, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

This has left me discouraged at times, assuming I shouldn’t have to rely on God so much to keep me from crashing again and again. One day, retreating to my prayer chair after another fall to lick my wounds and apologize to God for not being able to handle things on my own, St Joseph reminded me of something crucial:

Fortitude is not about you being strong on your own.

Ohhh. Right.

Strength doesn’t come from me. It comes from being connected to the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The moment we begin to take our Christian path seriously — it happens at different times for each of us — we might think of it like learning how to ride a bike.

We look forward to the freedom that Jesus promises if we follow Him. And in the beginning, we are not very good at doing that. Our sins make us clumsy, and we fall a lot. But we keep turning back to Him for help, reading our Bible, trying to pray, going to Mass and confession. 

He’s like our training wheels, keeping us steady. Slowly but surely, we start making progress, and we become more confident. Then, like a child getting the hang of it, we are tempted to throw off the training wheels, wanting to prove we can do it on our own. 

But the Christian life is not a journey of independence. Rather, it’s about achieving greater levels of dependence on God.

Truthfully, it can be helpful to think of Jesus as training wheels, as long as we aren’t foolish enough to think we should ever remove them. There is no point where we are supposed to pedal on our own and leave Him behind. 

Remember, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

In the Bible, we see Jesus using local examples and familiar concepts to teach people spiritual truths. Two thousand years ago, bicycles hadn’t yet been invented, and training wheels weren’t a thing. But I could imagine a modern version of Jesus’ teaching sounding something like this:

“You are a bike, and I am the training wheels. If you keep me attached, you will go far. If you remove me, you will crash and skin your knee.”

We shouldn’t be discouraged that we’re not riding this bike on our own by now. We were never supposed to. The Christian life is often the opposite of the world’s way of doing things. In the Christian life, not only are we supposed to keep the training wheels bolted on, but we should always be looking to upgrade them.

The times I’ve tried to go without them have not gone well. It took me a while, but I’m finally realizing that it’s nothing to be ashamed about. I still have the training wheels, and I feel like they’re better. They must be like the LX model — all chromed out and extra strength and whatnot — because I can see that with His help, I’ve been able to withstand storms in the past few years that would have destroyed me a decade ago. 

“Apart from me, you can do nothing.”

No longer am I hoping to cast the training wheels aside.

Someday, I hope to level up to the limited edition, gold-plated, Saintly model.

Lent is an ideal time to work on upgrading our training wheels.

Let’s ride.