The 84-year-old conspiracy theorist told a Christian audience more harmful lies

May 04, 2024

Fundamentalist preacher John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California said during a recent conference that post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other forms of mental illness are essentially hoaxes.

“There's no such thing,” he said of those conditions.

His comments came weeks after accusing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of not being Christian, calling him “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.”

This time, MacArthur was speaking at the “For the Valley Bible Conference” hosted by Grace Church of the Valley in California on April 20. During a Q&A session with panelists, MacArthur was asked about a book he wrote a while back about the purported “war on children.”

He explained that kids are basically dirty rotten sinners who eventually pass their sins down to their own children, as if sins were on the human genome, so it was important to deal with sin from an early age.

What kind of sins? “The homosexuals say ‘We are coming after your kids,’” MacArthur lied. He added that companies like Disney were “targeting” children… somehow.

And then he went on a different completely insane tangent.

He said he was reading a different book that explained how everything we knew about mental illness was a lie and psychiatrists and psychologists were finally admitting it. (None of that is true.)

… The major noble lie is there is such a thing as mental illness. Now this isn't new… 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, [at] the end of the day, to medicate people. And Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that.

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 the grief? Grief is a real thing. But grief is part of life. And if you can't navigate grief, you can't live life.

But if you clinically define that, you can give them a pill, a series of medications, and they end up in L.A., homeless on the sidewalk.

In regard to children, it's the most deadly thing that's been unleashed on children—medication… We're trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make. 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 a potential, well, not only a potential drug addict, but maybe a potential criminal. Because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way.

He’s quite literally saying the pharmaceutical industry made up illnesses like PTSD in order to sell drugs. By diagnosing those illnesses, doctors are turning people into drug addicts and criminals.

It’s not just utterly wrong. It’s downright cruel and dismissive of everyone who has actually struggled with those conditions.

Naturally, no one else on that panel had a word of criticism for MacArthur. The moderator soon wrapped up the session by telling the men—and, of course, there were only men on the panel—”thank you for your wisdom.”

MacArthur isn’t a genius. His degree is in theology but he acts like an armchair psychiatrist, pretending to be an expert in areas he knows nothing about. It’s honestly impressive that he tried to criticize the pharmaceutical industry yet ended up making himself look like the asshole.

There are valid concerns about doctors over-prescribing drugs, or patients getting addicted to opioids, or even the fields of psychiatry and psychology. MacArthur didn’t land a single blow.

He didn’t even tell the audience the real story about his “war on children” book:

“The War on Children” was originally slated to be published by Thomas Nelson. However, after The Roys Report (TRR) published exposés, revealing that MacArthur failed to protect child abuse victims, and excommunicated a mother for refusing to allow her abusive husband back into her home, that agreement apparently fell through. Other Christian publishers also refused the book, so in March, MacArthur self-published the book through his ministry.  

When a Christian publisher—one whose parent company works with Mark Driscoll—refuses to work with you because you’re too toxic, you have a problem.

Here’s the truth: PTSD is not just a synonym for grief. It has a different set of symptoms. It involves trauma rather than just a loss. And, yes, it may require medication to treat. As Adam O’Neill, a Psychiatric Physician Assistant (and a Christian), wrote on his own site, “For those of us who have treated trauma disorders, we can see both physically and mentally the impact of a traumatic experience on a person.”

O’Neill went on to respond to MacArthur’s comments on OCD and ADHD:

Suffice to say here, OCD is more than anxiety and ADHD more than distraction. Both in their genetic predispositions, neurological basis, and functional impact they represent clear clinical entities for which treatments have produced great results.

As for the line about how giving children meds will turn them into addicts or criminals, it’s telling that MacArthur has no statistics to back that up. That’s because there are none. He just made it up. He’s a preacher. It’s what he does best.

If you are struggling with mental illness, let’s hope you can see an experienced professional who can properly diagnose you and, if needed, give you the prescriptions you need. Prayers and the knowledge-free ramblings of an 84-year-old pastor (whose doctorates are purely honorary) aren’t going to help.

All of this is part of a pattern for MacArthur. He has a history of lying in the name of Jesus to gullible Christians who just accept it as truth. MacArthur has previously denied climate change, saying “God intended us to use this planet” and that “it is a disposable planet.” He openly celebrated the lack of social distancing and face masks in his congregation during the height of COVID, once telling a packed house, “the good news is you’re here, you’re not distancing, and you’re not wearing masks.” In August of 2020, he falsely claimed, “There is no pandemic.” (That October, there was an outbreak at his church.) He has also said “no one is gay.”

He’s nothing more than a conspiracy theorist who regurgitates lies while telling ignorant people they are facts. They should have stopped listening to him decades ago. Instead, very unserious people kept propping him up to the point where MacArthur can get away with bigger, bolder, more dangerous lies.