John MacArthur has received a lot of backlash on the internet for questioning the mental health industry with his comments at a recent conference. During a Q&A session, MacArthur would say that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) are not real.
“There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD.”
— Dean Defuria (@_DeanAnthony) May 1, 2024
— John MacArthur pic.twitter.com/PzZTijKl5x
John MacArthur went on to claim that the clinical diagnosis of PTSD et al. creates an excuse to medicate people. He then equates PTSD to grief.
On ADHD he argues that the mental health industry is devastating children and giving parents an out for not teaching their children how to navigate life. He finishes the clip by stating that the drugs being given to children set them up for bad habits, be it drug addiction or even criminal behavior.
It’s important to note that MacArthur spoke in generalities, especially about ADHD. The majority of the backlash is over PTSD and John MacArthur’s reductionist words. MacArthur’s take on ADHD was rather tame and has been popular for decades.
Here’s the full clip for added context and the book “A Profession Without Reason” that MacArthur references https://t.co/9VNfsiqIAm pic.twitter.com/nVDHJtinwn
— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) May 1, 2024
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3 Responses
There’s no question the field of psychology has gotten too big for its britches. It has been slowly getting more and more at odds with scripture for as long as I can remember, back to making a stink about spanking. Now it has reached the point where they’re trying to force Christians to affirm sin, and in some cases ripping children away from parents for refusing to do so.
The battle against such technocracy is one that we can no longer shy away from.
And it’s a disgrace how many professing Christians flew off the handle and just about tripped over themselves running to social media as fast as they could to condemn what pastor MacArthur said.
They should be careful that they do not “deny the power thereof”
Through sanctification, not only does the Holy Spirit renew our mind, but we are given power over the flesh, to rule over the flesh. We’re admonished to control our mind and to control our thinking. To take power over it. And the Lord will never ask us to do anything we cannot do. If He tells us to control our mind, then we absolutely can.
There were some good posts about this over at Protestia, which I pretty much agree with. I’m not bashing any and all people in the field of pscyhology, or trying to bash anybody with a mental illness, but by and large, and in general, I agree that much of psychology these days is a bunch of hooey.
It’s a battle we have no choice but to fight these days, and I appreciate pastor MacArthur for having the guts to fight that battle.
Right out of high school, I started out as a psychology major. But I couldn’t stomach some of it, and changed my major. The use of statistics and bell curves to determine health, for example. It’s a relativist approach that changes with the whims of society, pretty much dependent on whichever way the wind is blowing on a given day. Right, as Christians, who hold to the absolute truth of God’s word, we don’t determine what is healthy by majority vote anymore than we determine what is right or wrong by majority vote.
On top of that, you have individuals who get into the field and try to find and make up new disorders anywhere and everywhere just to make a name for themselves. So you end up with a new disorder about every five minutes.
ADHD is one such “disorder”. I don’t know anybody who takes it seriously. A short attention span, and hyperactivity, is otherwise known as “being a kid”. Children grow up and grow out of it. And part of that growing up is learning how to control themselves, to control their own mind, to control their attention. Treating it as a disorder, overusing medication, etc., deprives them of that learning process to a significant degree. So rather than learn how to control their mind and make themselves stay attentive, and growing out of it like everyone else has done throughout all of history, they’ll likely carry it with them, and possibly never grow out of it.
There are Christian psychologists and counselors, who work based on the absolute truth of scripture, who are fantastic, and a tremendous blessing. But there are others who do nothing but work iniquity. I’m talking about the field in general.
You talk to some of them, and it’s like there’s no way mankind could’ve possibly survived for thousands of years without their “expertise”.
Like Paul said, he “put away childish things”
How?
Well, by putting them away. The so-called “ADHD” is thusly cured …
It reminds me of my Dad.
If I said, I can’t stop thinking of something, I can hear him saying yes you can. I’d say “how?”, and he’d say “by not thinking about it”.
Sometimes it’s that simple. There’s wisdom behind that simplicity. We can control the mind. We do have power over the flesh. And the field of psychology is often counterproductive in that respect. A significant part of it just about requires the assumption, as a precondition, that we cannot control our mind.