Lashed to the Mast

An essential lesson from “The Odyssey"

With the release of the film The Odyssey—which I recommend—I thought I’d share this selection from my book, The Quiet Ambition, in which I riff off of one of the most powerful scenes in the story (true both for the book and the movie).

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Odysseus knew the danger. Circe warned him of the Sirens. Their beautiful songs were so powerful that they could distract a sailor from his goal—in Odysseus’s case, returning home to Ithaca. What’s worse, the Sirens weren’t benign figures: Their aim was to lure unwitting mariners so that, drawn in by the mellifluous sounds, they would dash their ships against the rocks.

So Odysseus took extreme measures. He stuffed the crew’s ears with beeswax so that they couldn’t hear the songs, and insisted that he himself be lashed to the mast of the ship lest he be lured off course. The hope of home depended upon it.¹

I take this brief foray into ancient Greek mythology because we have completed almost an exact historical inversion of Odysseus’s quest. The Sirens continue their songs unabated. But now, not only do we not resist them at all costs, we put them in our pockets and give them full reign over our lives.

Today’s Sirens take the form of our devices, smartphones chief among them, and though at times the songs they emit may sound sweet, in the end it’s a lot of noise. We’ve alluded already to the pings and dings that have become so ever-present. But the actual sounds produced by our phones are only the tip of the noise iceberg. These devices are finely tuned, exquisitely honed distraction machines. If you were trying to introduce as much static into everyday life as possible, you’d be hard pressed to generate something more effective than the Sirens we voluntarily strap to ourselves every day.

The Best Part of Camp

Jeremiads against the smart-device industrial complex have become so commonplace as to be trite, so I don’t wish simply to add to the, well, noise. Adults can and should know better by now than to surrender themselves to the alluring effects of smartphones and their ilk.² But we ought to attend more closely to what this noise is doing to our kids.

I traveled to a gathering of pastors at a Christian youth camp in north Idaho a couple of years ago. The camp director gave a presentation, and then opened up time for questions. His answer to one question in particular has stayed with me. One of the pastors asked, “What do kids say is their favorite part about coming to camp?” We’re thinking swimming in the lake, time with friends, nonstop flow of sugar from the trading post . . .something along those lines. But the director doesn’t hesitate before answering, “There are no cell phones.” We all laugh, but he keeps a straight face. “I’m serious. The kids find it a relief not to be always on.”

The stats are alarming. Seventy percent of American kids now own a smartphone by age twelve, and more than half by the age of seven—before many of them can even read. On average, they’re spending eight hours a day online: a full-time job.³ And the research of psychologist Jonathan Haidt and others has demonstrated that the precipitous decline in teen and young adult mental health over the last decade can be largely attributed to smartphone and social media usage.

“The younger the age of getting the first smartphone,” Haidt writes, summarizing a recent study, “the worse the mental health that the young adult reports today.” He continues: “There is increasing evidence that smartphones have a variety of detrimental effects on child development including reductions of sleep, focus, and time with friends in person, along with increases in addictive behaviors.”⁴

Most poignantly for our purposes, all this noise from our devices also can have profound consequences on the life of faith. Writing in her book The Wired Soul, author Tricia McCary Rhodes lays out some of the spiritual implications of our tech-saturated existence:

• Continually switching from one thing to another trains our brains to seek constant stimulation, making it difficult to spend quiet, focused time with God.

• A steady diet of skimming and scrolling makes us incapable of deep reflection and contemplation, so that we struggle to plumb the depths of God’s Word and transcendent truths.

• Compulsive phone use makes us inattentive to people who may be right in front of us: a failure to love our neighbors.⁵

I could go on. When we talk about noisemakers being lethal, these gadgets we find ourselves tethered to are exhibit A. The Siren song threatens to sink the quiet ambition before it even starts.

Tallying the Impact

“How does one tally the true impact of noise?” asks audio ecologist Gordon Hempton. “You can start with the health effects,” he writes: “hearing loss, loss of sleep, possible harm to the unborn fetus, increased risk of heart disease and therefore probably a shortened life span.” But he doesn’t stop there.

There are also detrimental effects on learning, decreased productivity, more sick days. Factor in misunderstandings and miscommunication: the wisdom of a teacher or a subtle warming in a first-­date dialogue, words uttered but unheard above the din.⁶

Hempton is talking about the costs of the literal loudness all around us, and these ought to be well accounted for. But his inventory also points to a deeper spiritual truth: all this noise is injurious to our relationship with God. All the static distracts us from hearing the voice of our Lord.

“My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says, “and I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:27). And the prophet Isaiah tells us, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness will be quietness and trust forever” (Is 32:17). All the static distracts us from prioritizing what matters most.

If we wish to withstand the noisy Siren songs of our age, what hope do we have but to hold fast in faith to the Lord who was lashed to the mast on Calvary in order to bring us home?

1. Homer, The Odyssey, Book XII.

2. For those who are looking for more concrete advice on taking steps in this direction, I recommend Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2017) and Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism (New York: Penguin, 2019).

3. Olivia Reingold, “The Parents Saying No to Smartphones,” The Free Press, May 22, 2023, thefp.com/p/the-parents-saying-no-to-smartphones.

4. Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch, “Kids Who Get Smartphones Earlier Become Adults with Worse Mental Health,” After Babel, May 15, 2023, www.afterbabel.com/p/sapien-smartphone-report. See also Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation (New York: Penguin, 2024).

5. Tricia McCary Rhodes, The Wired Soul (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2016).

6. Gordon Hempton, One Square Inch of Silence, 216.