Again, what is the Kingdom of God like, and to what shall it be compared?
It is like the mighty ocean, full of breaking waves in all of its glory.
Now there have been many who have sought to understand the ocean’s waves and their movements. Their understandings can be seen in their depictions throughout art history.
Hokusai’s famous rendition of The Great Wave, painted in 1831, is possibly the most reproduced image in the history of all art, depicting a towering peak of water, dwarfing even Mount Fuji in the distance, with foamy white claws threatening fishing boats on a stormy ocean.
Hokusai’s painting reveals his understanding of the sea and its waves as an instrument of wrath and destruction.
Fast-forward to the introduction of the ancient Polynesian practice of surfing to the modern world. As this practice introduced a new kind of relationship to the ocean, it follows that a new kind of art emerged from its practitioners.
These began to depict the smooth sculpted tapering lines that surfers look for, culminating with one of the most iconic images from surf culture, the Pacific Vibrations movie poster by Rick Griffin, depicting the wave as a watery womb, a life-giving force, as it had become to many who found in the thrill and challenge of surfing a healthy path forward in a post-modern world gone mad.
We can see how our relationship with the ocean’s waves changes our deepest understanding of them, and our depictions of them as a result.
Each of these images struck a chord with humanity and are renowned as some of the greatest works of their times whose creators were clearly inspired by something beyond themselves to create these powerful works.
We could call Hokusai’s an old testament of wrath and fear. And we could call Griffin’s a new testament of birth and life. But both speak of the same truth – the power of the ocean’s breaking waves.
In addition to art, there are science textbooks full of useful illustrations depicting the dynamics of breaking waves, the movement of waters, currents, rip tides, and how to navigate them safely.
The artwork and the books alike, these are all mere depictions of the truth, useful for teaching. The science textbooks cannot be used to fully explain the life-giving thrill of surfing or the absolute fear and terror instilled when the ocean breaks out of the bounds of our expectations like a wild beast. Nor does the art explain the depth at which a wave breaks, or what to do when caught in a rip current.
An ocean lover does well to study them all. They may even grow in their knowledge of the ocean when they are moved by the artist’s inspirations, or instructed by the science books factual presentations.
But alas, these sources, while truthful, and inspired, are merely representations of the truth. Inspired scripture, our refined doctrines, all of these only point to the truth from the vantage point of our relationship with it.
Woe to the one who remains always on land, who studies the art, and devours the books, believing that by them they will have life should their boat ever capsize. For the day will come, when they are forced into the depths and the water that surrounds them will be as chaos, and they will mourn the day with great regret that they neglected their relationship with the true thing itself, with the mighty ocean.
On that day they will find they woefully misunderstood the art and the texts, and if only they had spent time in the sea they would have seen the art and texts more clearly.
For just like the mighty ocean, full of breaking waves in all its glory, when we neglect our immersion in the actual truth of a living, spiritual, and experiential relationship with God, and exchange it for our sound doctrine and mere depictions of that relationship (no matter how scriptural they are), we remain separate from God, on dry ground, and woefully unprepared for and ignorant of eternal life (which we were ransomed for at a great cost, but that’s another story), which is available to us now in spirit and truth, not merely as knowing the words on a page.
