Why John MacArthur is drastically wrong on mental health.

Pastor John MacArthur's comments on mental health and medication are misguided, destructive, and plain wrong. Here's the truth instead.

UPDATE: MacArthur has doubled down on his comments. You can read my response here:

John MacArthur doubles down on his mental health comments. And he's still wrong.

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Today is a sad day for evangelicals and the Christian Church. I just watched John MacAurthur spend several minutes telling the world that one of the biggest lies in society right now is “that there is such a thing as mental illness.”

As someone with diagnosed anxiety, OCD, and depression (and who wrote a book on faith and mental health), I’m telling you MacArthur is wrong. And I’m going to tell you why.

First, the comments. Here is the most disturbing part:

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 end of the day, to medicate people. And Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that.

These came from a question and answer panel featuring MacArthur, Scott Ardavanis, Jonny Ardavanis, and Costi Hinn on April 20, 2024, at Grace Church of the Valley.

I’m going to let you watch as much as you want before I offer my thoughts, which will be extensive. I’ve embedded the full video below, but it will automatically start where MacArthur begins addressing mental health. Those comments, by the way, came in response to a question about his book on raising kids in culture today:

A sad day

As I said in the opening, this is a sad day. Especially in light of the fact that we just started Mental Health Awareness Month. Initially I was upset when I first saw the comments, but as I’ve sat with them more and listened to them multiple times, I’m mostly just sad.

I’m sad for the people that MacArthur shepherds who have anxiety, depression, OCD, and PTSD and who have just been slapped in the face.

I’m sad for the Christian community, which is seen as uneducated and dismissive on this topic.

I’m sad for Christians who suffer with mental health, whose detractors have now been given ammunition by such a stalwart figure to dismiss and belittle them.

John MacArthur has done a lot of good in his life. He’s preached a lot of great sermons. He has advanced the gospel. But these comments right here threaten to undo a lot of that good.

We took a step back with these comments today. When my book on faith and mental health came out in 2021, I wrote a chapter called “A Prescription for the Church” about what the faith community could do better. Over the last three years, we have been getting better.

But these comments show how much further we have to go.

What follows is not a “takedown” of MacArthur. It’s not a call for him to be cancelled. It’s not written out of anger. What I hope is that people will understand that faith and mental health issues can coexist. That not all Christians subscribe to MacArthur’s beliefs. And that there is plenty of biblical evidence for believing that mental health issues — and all health issues — aren’t all spiritual.

There is hope.

Handling the doubters

First, though, let me start here. Inevitably, there are going to be those who defend MacArthur’s comments. I suspect the biggest defense will be that MacArthur was simply saying what some OTHERS have said. I don’t think that’s fair.

Is it true that he’s talking about what he’s read in two books? Yes. But if you both watch and read the transcript (which I’ve included in full below), you’ll see that it’s really hard to decipher where his ideas end and the the ideas he’s talking about begin, or vice versa. And it seems pretty clear that he’s adopting what he’s saying he’s read as his own stance.

In fact, there’s a REASON he’s paraphrasing the books and authors in the first place: it’s to let us know what great points they’re making. Thus, he’s letting us know that he believes these things as well. Watch and read the comments and that becomes clear.

In the end, please don’t try and defend the indefensible. It’s OK to say MacArthur was wrong on this one. He is wrong on this one.

This isn’t the first time

And yet, it appears MacArthur has a history of this. Now his past doubts on the reality of mental health issues are coming to light. In fact, in a conversation with fellow pastor John Piper several years ago, MacArthur seemed absolutely stupefied when Piper admitted he struggled with depression “for years.” And pay close attention to how Piper picks up on it. It’s telling…

The truth

So what is the truth when it comes to mental health and faith? MacArthur, ironically, did the very thing in his comments that he accused everyone else of doing: he perpetuated a big lie. Mental health issues are real. PTSD is real. It’s not just “grief.” OCD is real. I can’t believe I’m having to write that, but here we are.

The following are points that I talk about extensively in my book, “Finding Rest: A Survivor’s Guide to Navigating the Valleys of Anxiety, Faith, and Life.”

Mental health issues exist and are real

Three prominent pastors come to mind in order to prove this point: The aforementioned John Piper, Tommy Nelson, and Charles Spurgeon.

Piper, one of the stalwarts of the Reformed Church movement, has been open about his struggles. He and MacArthur are contemporaries and friends and have even talked about this, as noted above.

So Exhibit A is this: John Piper is not lying when he says he has struggled with depression. It is real. He’s not been duped by Big Pharma.

Exhibit B would be Tommy Nelson. Nelson leads a massive church in Texas called Denton Bible Church. Interestingly, he (like MacArthur) was skeptical about depression too — until he got depressed.

Listen to his story here.

And finally, Exhibit C is Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon is more than just a famous preacher from the 1800s. He is often called “the prince of preachers.” His messages are some of the most read and quoted among people of all denominations. He’s a titan of the faith. And yet, did you know that he struggled with his mental health? He had an ongoing battle with depression. In fact, it was such a struggle that he and his wife wrote openly about it. He even gave advice to young preachers not to be surprised if they found themselves full of “melancholy.”

Spurgeon, the “prince of preachers.” And yet he struggled with depression. It’s real.

(Oh, and then there’s this: “Barna Group researcher Ashley Ekmay says half of pastors they surveyed report experiencing depression at some point.”)

Medication is a common grace

We go to the doctor for a broken arm, but for some reason Christians have a hard time going to the doctor for a broken brain. I think one of the reasons for that is because we don’t understand that medication is a common grace.

Common grace is not a complex, theological idea. In fact, it’s all around us and has helped solidify my fundamental understanding of mental health medication.

If you woke up this morning and there was daylight, you experienced common grace. When you taste the richness of a good steak, you experience common grace. When you take antibiotics, antidepressants, or Mucinex, you experience common grace.

God has given all His creatures gifts—gifts that sustain, gifts that heal, and gifts that invoke pleasure, to name a few. He didn’t have to make sex enjoyable, art beautiful, or food tasty. But He did. Whether you believe in God or not, whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, the gifts of community, good coffee, and beautiful music continue to surround us. They’re gifts given by God irrespective of status, spirituality, or sin. The evil dictator can experience them just as much as the imprisoned believer.

In other words, those things that God has given to all humanity are common graces: the seasons, language, stories, and absolutely the discovery of antibiotics and other medicines.

And you know what? It’s prideful to say that God can help you in any way but by taking medication. Who are you to decide that? What if it takes more faith and more humility to believe God can help you through a little white pill instead of a miracle?

Or what if the pill IS the miracle?

Mental health issues are BOTH spiritual and physical

The world and the Church have a similar problem: Neither want to admit that mental health issues are both physical and spiritual. But they are.

The truth is that treating anxiety and OCD requires a holistic approach. In fact, I have experienced the most relief when I am taking medication (treating my brain), exercising and eating better (treating my body), and pressing into my faith (feeding my spirit). Think of them as the three legs of a stool that support your mental health:

When you look at the diagram, you see that two of those are physical (brain and body) and one of them is spiritual. The key to finding rest amid your anxiety and OCD, then, is recognizing that your mental health is made up of both physical and spiritual components. Your job is to address all aspects. Do that, and you’ll be surprised at just how different your life can be. Trust me, I have been.

Remember, we are NOT just spiritual beings. We have bodies, and fallen bodies at that. Death and disease are part of our experience. Mental health issues are part of our experience. They have both physical and spiritual components, and we must treat all of them.

Even Paul prescribed “medication” for Timothy’s “frequent ailments” — and it may have been depression

Did you know Paul recommended taking medication? He did. A few years ago my wife and I were taking a discipleship class at our church and were assigned a tiny book called “Grow in Grace” by a Scottish theologian named Sinclair Ferguson. Near the end he points out 1 Timothy 5:23. I can tell you that I never really paid attention to 1 Timothy 5:23. When you read it in the English Standard Version, it’s literally an aside, a parenthetical phrase from Paul to Timothy. It comes out of nowhere. Here’s what it says: “(No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.)”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like Paul was writing Timothy a prescription for his “stomach and . . . frequent ailments,” and that prescription wasn’t faith or prayer. It was wine. He recommended a physical answer to a physical problem.

You know what else? In something that is ironically fitting, Ferguson goes a step further in suggesting what some of Timothy’s ailments might have been. “He would have found the weakening effect of his sickness a great burden; it may also have been a source of great depression.” Depression. Timothy may have had depression, a mental illness. And Paul was recommending a common grace—wine—to fix the underlying issues, which could then help his mood.

If common grace was good enough for Paul and Timothy, it should be good enough for you and me.

Mental health struggles aren’t a punishment or the result of a lack of faith

Your anxiety, your OCD, your depression, your whatever else are not punishments for sin in your life. God is not examining your ledger from last weekend and doling out a little anxiety here or a little depression there to make you pay for your bad word, lustful thought, or shameful comment. Or your lack of faith. That’s not how this works. He’s not an A+B=C God. That’s the prosperity gospel, honestly.

Your mental health struggles aren’t sin in and of themselves either. They can lead us into sin, meaning we can act sinfully when we refuse to fight them and give in to their lies. So often, though, we convince ourselves that the sin is in the struggle. We feel guilty for even having to battle it. What kind of person am I? Who thinks like that? That quickly leads to shame, and shame quickly leads to more fear, depression, and anxiety. Then the cycle starts all over again.

Yes, God has allowed these struggles to happen. But He is faithful to redeem them and redeem you. He is using them for your good and His glory.

How do I know? Look at the book of Job. I call it the most important book of the Bible. In it, do you realize that it’s God that brings Job up to the devil? It is! God says, “have you considered my servant Job?” And from there, he allows all sort of suffering and pain in Job’s life — suffering and pain that ultimately leads to Job’s good and God’s glory.

Job’s suffering is not the result of a woke society, bad parenting, or overmedication. It’s the result of a sovereign God and a fallen world. My anxiety and OCD exist because we live in a fallen world as well. Bad things happen, disease spreads, and mental illness is a reality because sin entered the world. But because God is good and powerful, He doesn’t leave us alone. He takes what is meant for evil and works it for my good and His glory. While my anxiety and OCD are here because of the sin that entered the world, I can still have hope for redemption and sanctification through Christ, a hope that I know can only be truly fulfilled outside of this world, while still fulfilling my calling to endure in this one (see Rom. 5:1–5).

The way forward

I’m not against redemption. I’m not against sanctification. I’m getting ready to tell my own story of sanctification and grace, where last year I found myself stuck in a sin that was destroying me and my family. I’m all about grace! And I’m willing to extend that to MacArthur.

But here’s the important part: I think MacArthur needs to see that he has errored and apologize. He needs to be humble enough to admit he’s wrong and see how his comments are hurtful. He needs to get more educated, maybe from someone like, say, John Piper.

Am I saying that MacArthur has committed a grave sin? No, I am not. He has made a mistake. He has hurt people. He is in error. But I don’t think he has sinned.

However, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have something to apologize for. He does. And I hope — I pray — that happens.

(I’ve opened up comments to everyone on this post, so let me know your thoughts.)

Full transcipt

I want to be fully transparent here. I’m not trying to twist MacArthur’s words or take them out of context. So I’m also including a transcript of his remarks that I paid to have done:

The other day, I was reading a book, interesting book called, A Profession Without Reason. It's a book that shows basically, and 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. And the major noble lie is there such a thing as mental illness. Now, this isn't new. You have Thomas Szasz, back in the 1950s, writing a book, who is 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 end of the day, to medicate people. And Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that. If you if you understand, take PTSD, for example. What that really is, is grief. You're fighting a war, you lost your buddies, you have a certain amount of survivor’s 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. But if you clinically defined 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. 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 some, 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. So the book deals with the ways in which children are being assaulted. And they're formidable because they're done by media. And they're in the hand of every kid through the cell phone. So the church has got to step up. We started a campaign called grace for the children. If you want to strengthen a church, and I know it's true here, you want to strengthen a church, minister to the children, let the parents know you're you're going to work to protect the children, which is the parents greatest concern. So I wrote the book along those lines. I was telling you guys earlier that several Christian publishers passed on it, they wouldn't publish it. Which shows you how woke even Christian publishing has become.

Some of my writing here is taken from my book, “Finding Rest.” For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, you can pick up the book on Amazon.