I have been a passenger on a motorcycle only three times in my life and all of them have been in the past few months (twice in Kerala and once in Nepal). These have been scary, thrilling, faith-inducing experiences. Even though it may sound silly, I think being a passenger on a motorbike in a developing country is a great metaphor for having total faith in God.
Before I get into more detail, I’ll briefly describe the three rides I’ve been on (and how they felt increasingly risky):
Ride #1: This was an evening ride through the back alleys of Fort Kochi to a small beach. I wore a helmet and long pants and we didn't crack 40 kilometres per hour. Most of the other traffic was scooters and pedestrians.
Ride #2: A night ride on a multi-lane highway in Ernakulam (the metropolitan centre of Kochi) to and from a soccer pitch for a social game with young guys from local churches. I had a helmet but was wearing shorts, and we apparently went over 80 kilometres per hour (it's impossible to know how fast we went because the bike's speedometer had stopped working after a fuse blew in the circuitry which also apparently affected the automatic braking system). We wove between cars and trucks and buses, and other bikes pressed close around us. I had to consciously choose not to panic when the driver gunned the throttle to overtake a car and make a u-turn between two autorickshaws.
Ride #3: A daytime ride from a small village on the outskirts of Kathmandu to an even smaller village in the foothills of the Nepa Valley. I had no helmet and the driver spoke little English. I had no idea where we were or where we were going or why we seemed to be constantly switching between skinny dirt tracks and dusty roads filled with tourist buses. Road closures meant we had to keep changing our route. The last section of the road before our destination was a steep, sandy track which we fishtailed down, sliding left and right while the driver struggled to keep the bike upright. He started laughing, which made it all feel even more scary, but he managed to get us down the hill without falling over.
Emma filming me speeding away on the back of a motorbike in rural Nepal
So how did these three experiences teach me about faith in God? Three particular aspects of trusting in Him stood out to me:
Letting God take over as driver is challenging — On the back of a motorcycle your vision is obscured by the driver, you are thrown side to side by the driver’s movements, and you are totally vulnerable to the driver’s decisions. I had only ever been the driver and never quite understood Emma’s trepidation every time she got on the back of a bike with me! As the passenger, you are relinquishing control in a very tangible way. If the driver makes a mistake, or even slightly misjudges the chaotic traffic and bad roads, you could be seriously injured or even killed. So you need to trust the driver and their abilities.
When we relinquish control to God, we often don’t know where He is leading us or what kind of life He wants us to have. This can feel challenging, as all of us would like to be in the driver’s seat, deciding where we go and how fast we get there. We want to be able to determine how dangerous the road appears and which turns to take. But I realised that if I can physically relinquish control to human drivers (even to people I barely know in a country I’ve just arrived in) then I should be able to trust my entire life to the God of the universe. He belongs in the driver’s seat and I belong at the back of the motorcycle, hanging onto Him and letting Him take me wherever He wants.
Riding on a motorcycle forces intimacy — On a motorcycle, you have to sit close to the person driving the bike, leaning when he leans and stopping yourself from shifting too far forward when he brakes. I was also often forced to bring my ear close to the driver’s face to hear what he was saying to me as we dodged through traffic.
More than any other form of transport, there is a physical closeness and familiarity inherent in sharing a motorbike. This is the kind of closeness and familiarity that God the Father desires with His children, and what Jesus desires with His Bride, the Church. To be like a motorcycle passenger in my relationship with God is to be very close and very in tune with Him, the driver.
My Captain America-themed scooter God is always preparing us for the next journey — God never gives us anything we cannot handle, if we take each step with Him. Each motorcycle ride I took was progressively more dangerous from my perspective, setting off more alarm bells in my Western brain which views motorbikes as death traps, Indian and Nepali traffic as insane, and the road conditions as fit only for a Land Cruiser with enhanced suspension. Unhelpfully, my brain is also very good at conjuring the likely headlines of my gruesome death, e.g. ‘Foolish tourist decapitated by oncoming truck while riding on Indian highway’.
In all seriousness, I am grateful to God that each ride was a preparation for the next, as even though my discomfort level increased each time, so had my experience of trusting the driver I was with and trusting God. And this is a microcosmic example of how God is always preparing us for what He knows is ahead in our lives. Step by step, He draws us toward a life of more faith and less self-reference, more trust in Him and less trust in our own judgements.
Looking back over my three passenger experiences, God's care is evident. I needed Ride #1 to prepare for Ride #2 so I was ready for Ride #3 — a journey I had no choice but to agree to, as riding on a motorcycle was the only way to get us to the village we were visiting.
It’s funny to think that I got my motorcycle driver’s licence before we left Australia, but God has used the act of being a motorcycle passenger to teach me about faith and entrusting myself completely to His perfect will.