The Bible opens with humans placed in a garden "to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15). Caring for creation is not a modern add-on to faith. It is part of the first job description God ever gave. Climate change and the collapse of fish stocks are, in part, questions about whether we are still doing that job.
This story about climate change and creation care, retold in our own words, is built around two real boats, one from the first century and one from the twentieth. Put side by side, they show how quickly the scale of our impact on the earth has grown. It ends with a takeaway for preaching or reflection.
Story in this post:
Two Boats: The Jesus Boat and the Supertrawler
In 1986, during a drought that pulled the waters of the Sea of Galilee back from the shore, two brothers from a nearby kibbutz spotted the outline of an old boat sunk in the mud. Archaeologists carefully dug it out. It turned out to be a wooden fishing boat from around the time of Jesus, now known as the Ancient Galilee Boat, or simply the "Jesus boat." It is a little over eight metres long and about 2.3 metres wide. Boats like it would have carried fishermen such as James and John, the brothers Jesus called away from their nets.
Around the same era that this humble boat came out of the mud, the world's fishing fleets were building a very different kind of vessel. The writer Scott Higgins describes a series of factory supertrawlers, around 120 metres long, able to cross oceans and process about two hundred tonnes of fish a day. These ships do not cast hand nets from the side. They drag enormous nets that can stretch hundreds of metres, and they find their catch with sonar and electronics rather than experience and eyesight.
In those two boats, Higgins argues, you can see the environmental challenge of our age. Human beings have always left a mark on the natural world. Even in the Roman era, fishing methods such as night fishing and fish traps put heavy pressure on some Mediterranean species. But the supertrawler represents something new in scale. A fleet can move into a fishing ground, haul fish out faster than they can breed, and then move on to the next one once the first is in decline.
The numbers today bear out the worry. In June 2025, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's global review of marine fish stocks found that 35.5 percent of assessed stocks were overfished.
What is happening in the sea is mirrored on land and in the air. Species are disappearing, coastal "dead zones" are forming where excess nitrogen runoff starves the water of oxygen, and the earth's climate is warming as a result of the greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere. The small wooden boat and the floating factory are two ways of relating to creation: one takes what it needs from a lake it knows; the other takes what it can from oceans it will never see again.
Takeaway: Jesus called fishermen from boats like the one in the Galilee mud, and he fed crowds with a few fish while making sure the leftovers were gathered "so that nothing is wasted" (John 6:12). Climate change and overfishing are not only political issues; they are questions about greed, gratitude and stewardship. Ask which boat your habits look more like.
Source: Scott Higgins, A Beautiful World: Christianity and Creation (2014), drawing on Tibor Grüll, "Ecological Changes in the Roman Mediterranean."
Final thoughts
A small boat in the mud and a factory ship on the open ocean. The distance between them is about more than technology. It is about whether we see creation as a gift to care for or a resource to strip. That is a question every Christian can answer in small, practical ways, at the shop, at the table and at the ballot box.
What is one habit you could change this month to take a little less from the world God made?
More stories you may like:
- Stories About Creation and the Environment
- Stories About Greed and Generosity
- Stories About the Bible, Science and Faith
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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