Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California recently claimed that there was no such thing as mental illness, including PTSD, OCD, and ADHD. During a panel discussion at Grace Church of the Valley last Thursday, MacArthur responded to a question regarding helping parents with America’s “cultural disaster.”
“Just to lay it out simply, kids are sinful. I have great-grandchildren, and by the time they’re 3 or 4, their sin nature is starting to be manifest. Then you add to that the sins of the fathers are visited under the generations, the third and fourth generation,” MacArthur said.
He also shared that the culture has been targeting children and trapping them in sin.
Regarding mental illness, MacArthur argued that the increased diagnosis of children with mental illness has to do with a lack of teaching them personal responsibility, and that giving them medications for these illnesses ends up turning them into drug addicts and potentially criminals.
“I was reading a book, interesting book, called “A Profession Without Reason.” It’s a book that shows, basically, this is pretty shocking to some of you, that psychiatry and psychology is finally admitting the noble lies that they’ve been telling for the last 100 years,” MacArthur said.
“And the major noble lie is there is such a thing as mental illness. Now, this isn’t new. You have Thomas Szasz … writing a book, who was a psychiatrist, on “The Myth of Mental Illness.” There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD. Those are noble lies to basically give the excuse to, at the end of the day, to medicate people. And Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that,” the pastor argued.
Regarding PTSD, MacArthur described it as “grief.”
“If you understand, take PTSD for example, what that really is, is grief. You are fighting a war you lost. Your buddies, you have a certain amount of survival guilt because you made it back, they didn’t. How do you deal with grief? Grief is a real thing. But grief is part of life, and if you can’t navigate grief, you can’t live life,” MacArthur asserted.
“But if you clinically define that, you can give them a pill, a series of medications, and they end up in LA, homeless on the sidewalk. This is, in regard to children, it’s the most deadly thing that’s been unleashed on children — medication,” he added.
As reported by The Christian Post, MacArthur also shared that several Christian publishers refused to publish his new book, The War on Children: Providing Refuge for Your Children in a Hostile World.
“We’re trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make,” he said. “And if you parent them properly, they’ll make right choices. But if you blame it on something other than their choices and you identify them as having something they can’t do anything about but medicate it, you literally are turning your child into … not only a potential drug addict, but maybe a potential criminal because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way.”
Editor’s note – Pastor MacArthur does not have a medical or mental health degree or credentials. If you are experiencing mental health issues, please seek help.
Photo credit: John MacArthur Facebook
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
