I grew up along the coast of Kupang, Indonesia, and spent most of my free time by the sea. Besides swimming and fishing, I loved playing soccer on the beach, which was only possible at low tide. My friends and I would often jokingly ask the sea to dry up earlier or come back later so we could have more time to play. Obviously, the sea ignored our requests. But these experiences showed me that the sea was unpredictable and fearsome.
Biblical depictions of the sea evoke a similar interpretation. The Psalms describe the foamy waters (46:3), roaring waves (65:7), and surging sea (89:9) as difficult situations that urgently need God’s intervention. The runaway prophet Jonah gets thrown off a boat to calm the raging sea (Jonah 1:15). The Gospels see Jesus rescuing his disciples from a terrible storm (Mark 4:35–41).
Many tend to read Bible passages like these and interpret the sea negatively, as dangerous and threatening. Such perceptions of the sea in Scripture are influenced by ancient Near Eastern myths that regard the sea as a symbol of chaos and destruction, Old Testament scholar Kenneth W. Lovett writes.
In the ancient Mesopotamian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, the sea functions as an enemy. One of the poem’s inscriptions describes a flood as “an army in battle.” Tiamat, a character in the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, personifies the primordial sea and symbolizes monstrous chaos, Lovett argues.
How the Bible describes the sea may also contribute to negative interpretations of it. God often uses the sea as a “tool of judgment against sin,” Lovett says, and Satan and other evil beasts emerge from the waters in Daniel’s vision.
But what Lovett and other theologians miss is that many of these negative interpretations of the sea in Scripture emerge from humanity’s inability to control and master it. A wider, fuller interpretation of the sea gives us a picture of God’s uncontrollability: the power, majesty, and holiness that define his character.
A biblical narrative of the sea that is solely negative is an anthropocentric perspective, where we interpret the world according to human values and experiences. In reading the sea only as chaotic and destructive, we inevitably practice what I call blue anthropocentrism, a reflection of humanity’s delusional dominion over the sea.
As finite human beings, however, we cannot control the waters—how currents ebb and flow, how marine creatures feed on all that grows within the sea, and how it responds to other natural phenomena like earthquakes and volcanoes.
Yet we mistakenly believe that the sea is an object to serve our interests. We view the sea as a site that overflows with economic profit, a means of fulfilling our greed. We think the sea is a vehicle for conquest, as the Roman Empire and European colonizers did.
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Through Scripture, God unveils our selfish, self-aggrandizing impulse to rule over the sea and everything in it.
While questioning Job, God mentions a mythical sea creature, the Leviathan. “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?” God asks Job (41:1). The Leviathan symbolizes absolute resistance to human arrogance, power, and greed, especially in efforts to domesticate and commodify nature, theologian Catherine Keller writes in an essay in the book Christianity and Ecology. “Any hope of subduing [the Leviathan] is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering,” God declares (v. 9).
God’s interrogation of Job and the rhetorical discourse on the Leviathan reveals humanity’s vulnerability: We are creatures with limitations, alongside the rest of creation.
Our finitude is not something to regret or lament. Nor is it a fact to deny. Instead, we ought to be grateful, for the human limitations that the Leviathan reveals invite us to recognize and accept our creatureliness. The Leviathan dismantles a view of the sea that privileges humanity as the center of its existence. We are hardly mightier than the Leviathan, after all.
Another instance where Scripture reminds us of our frailties is in one of Jesus’ interactions with his disciples. As they sail across the Sea of Galilee, a “furious squall” (Mark 4:37) breaks out, and powerful waves crash over the boat and nearly swamp it. All this time, Jesus is asleep. When his frightened followers ask him why he does not care if they drown, Jesus asks them, “Why are you so afraid?” (v. 40).
Jesus is not trying to shame the disciples for feeling afraid of the sea. He knows full well that they are unable to control what the sea does. Rather, his question reflects his divinity, presenting him as the only one who can calm the waters. Jesus’ question already presumes his power over all creation, including something as unruly as the sea.
The disciples’ inability to quell the roaring waves surrounding them is hardly a failure or inadequacy. Instead, Jesus calls them to accept their human limitations and to place their trust in him and his will.
The disciples also look upon Jesus’ act of calming the sea and marvel: “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (v. 41). Scripture invites us to see how the sea’s frothy, unpredictable nature testifies to a God who is likewise untamable and uncontrollable, a God who is far more holy and powerful than our finite minds can ever fully understand. As Psalm 77:19 puts it, “Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.”
The sea is sacramental because the sea speaks of a God who is beyond our control and prediction, Anglican priest Edmund Newell argues. “The sea’s varying moods resonate with our experiences of peace and turmoil, joy and sorrow, life and death,” Newell writes in his book The Sacramental Sea. “Eternal, unfathomable, elusive, powerful, mysterious, apparently infinite, life-giving, yet fearful: in its very essence the sea speaks of God.”
The sea is a site of danger and fear but also of wonder and awe. Both qualities can exist simultaneously, and both testify to our infinitely powerful and majestic God. The sea is not an enemy to defeat but a significant part of God’s creation that reveals more about who God is.
With this renewed interpretation of the raging sea in Scripture, we learn how to treat the sea in our world with respect and reverence, knowing that it provides us with glimpses of a God who is uncontainable, irreducible, and incomprehensible.
We also learn that adopting blue anthropocentrism is costly. This view preserves our perception of the sea—in Scripture and life—as chaotic and destructive. It places human interests above the natural character of the waters that God has made. It refuses to let the sea exist according to God’s order and empowerment of it.
If blue anthropocentrism persists, it will shape how we relate to the seas around us. We may keep employing science and technology to dominate the sea and reduce it to a mere object of commodification. We may overlook the ecological crisis at sea: destructive fishing practices, widespread coral bleaching “primarily driven by carbon emissions,” and increased plastic pollution in the ocean, all of which endanger life on the Blue Planet.
Every time we breathe, we are connected to and dependent on the sea, as most of the oxygen on this planet comes from phytoplankton and sea creatures, oceanographer Sylvia Earle asserts. God created and put humanity in an interconnected and interdependent community.
Rather than trying to dominate and master the sea or regard it simply as chaotic and destructive, we can consider the raging sea as a reflection of God’s magnificent and boundless nature. When we look upon powerful, white-capped waves crashing onto shore, go on bumpy boat rides across lakes, or head out to fish, we encounter and experience God’s immeasurable greatness.
To borrow from C. S. Lewis, the raging sea testifies that God is not safe, but he is good.
Elia Maggang is a vicar at the Protestant Evangelical Church in Timor, Indonesia (GMIT) and teaches theology of the sea and ecotheology at the Artha Wacana Christian University in Kupang, Indonesia. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.
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