In the ancient mind, the sea was a terrifying, untamable force that was to be feared. Jesus walking on top of a raging sea calls back to a lot of notions of God and power that are deeply embedded in Jewish consciousness. So when Peter attempts to walk on water and Jesus saves him, maybe Peter's problem is not that he takes his eyes off Jesus – it's that he wants Jesus to prove that he's there at all. Maybe faith is actually the ability to surrender control over the things we never had control over in the first place.