Recently, John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in California, preached two sermons on Mental Illness. His main focus was on Anxiety disorder, but his sermon could apply to any mental illness. I have some severe issues with what he had to say in these two sermons and so I decided that I need to write a blog series concerning them. As someone who struggles with Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type and Separation Anxiety Disorder, I feel like I need to address what Mr. MacArthur is saying because he has such a huge influence on many people worldwide. However, I'd like to say that although I do not pay much attention to him anymore, I do have the utmost respect for the man. I respect how he takes a bold stance against the culture, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, this is not an attack on Mr. MacArthur as a person. I am merely criticizing some points he has made in these two sermons. So, please do not think that I am just a "MacArthur-hater". I sincerely love him as a brother in Christ and I cannot wait to meet him in Heaven one day if I do not get the chance to meet him in this lifetime.
The passage that Mr. MacArthur preaches comes from Luke 12:22-34. It would be best if I posted that whole passage here to see what it says in its entirety. The passage he preaches comes directly from our Lord's mouth. Jesus says,
"...Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life, what you will wear, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If you are not able to do a small thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But, if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom and these things will be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in Heaven that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"
As you can see from this passage, Our Lord is commanding us not to worry about our lives because God is sovereign and He cares to provide for us. I do admit that trusting in His sovereignty has been one of the most comforting realities that I have come to realize. It is true that because God is sovereign, and He cares for us, we should not worry or fear anything in this life. Mr. MacArthur is absolutely right about that. My contention with him is about his gross oversimplification of what having an Anxiety disorder is. As I have said earlier, one of the disorders I deal with daily is Separation Anxiety Disorder. This disorder causes me to be fearful about significant others abandoning me. How this disorder manifests itself by causing me to become clingy and constantly panic whenever I am not around my significant other. I also tend to have vivid nightmares about significant others either leaving me or betraying me too. My Separation Anxiety Disorder has caused me to lose jobs and to skip classes when I was in college, which inevitably led to me failing courses. I say all of this to demonstrate how crippling having an anxiety disorder can really be. Mr. MacArthur oversimplifies the experience of what millions of people go through daily in these two blogs. I will demonstrate this in this series.
Mr. MacArthur titles these sermons "Anxiety-Free Living" or "Stress-Free Living", but what he says later will inevitably lead people with anxiety disorders to have more anxiety. I say this because when someone oversimplifies one's real struggle with an anxiety disorder, the person who deals with the disorder will then think that there must be something wrong with them or that they aren't a very good Christian. This will inevitably make the person much more anxious. The first part of this sermon comes from the third paragraph. John MacArthur says the following,
I understand while the...why the world is stressed out. I understand why people are anxious. I understand why they worry. I understand why they have panic attacks. It's frightening to be dangling in this inexplicable universe and feeling all alone and not being able to figure out why you're even here and where you're going. I understand there's a certain cosmic fear. I understand why people take drugs and drink and go on eating binges and shopping binges and wild adventures and all kinds of things to fill their minds with other thoughts. We are living in an anxiety-ridden culture. And the amazing thing about it is this is the most indulged, the most lavish society ever, this is the most comfortable society ever, this is the society that has the most but it seems to be the most angst-ridden, anxious, stressed out, panicked culture ever. We have a massive medical world that exists to do nothing but help people with stress. No worry goes unnamed. No worry goes undefined. No worry goes uncataloged. No worry goes undiagnosed. And no worry goes unmedicated. They just go unrelieved. People live with anxiety. They live with worry. They live with stress. But it's so common that we don't even talk about eliminating it. The term is "to manage it." You take a course, go to a seminar, listen to a lecture, buy a tape on stress management like it was a baseball team, needed a manager, or a production line. Then Jesus comes along and says, "I'm not going to teach you how to manage your stress, I'll eliminate it."
Mr. MacArthur says he understands why people are anxious and he does make a good point. According to the secular world, we are on a small ball that is orbiting the sun and nothing is controlling it that can stop it from colliding with the sun. According to the secular world, we are here because of a cosmic accident and there is no rhyme or reason for our existence. This belief indeed is enough to cause us intense anxiety. However, what he is saying only applies to secular people. I agree with him that secular people have a lot to be anxious about. However, millions of people trust in the sovereignty of the Almighty God who still deal with a lot of anxiety and need medication to help them cope. What Mr. MacArthur is essentially saying here is that these Christians are behaving just like secular people who have no trust in God. This is a horrible thing to say because what it does is alienate true Bible-believing Christians who deal with anxiety disorders from the rest of the flock. His statement causes us to feel like second-class citizens in the Christian community. Furthermore, in his last statement where he says that the best the secular world has to offer us is a way to manage our symptoms, but Jesus says He came to "eliminate them" which is very damaging to Christians who struggle with real anxiety disorders. The reason why I say this is because it sets these Christians up for a false hope. Mr. MacArthur tells these Christians that if they only come to Christ, then all of their anxiety will disappear, and they will be able to toss their medications away. However, the Christian faith is not a medical treatment and when these Christians realize that they are still dealing with their anxiety disorders, they will become disillusioned with the faith or think that there must be something wrong with them personally. I agree that the best the secular world has to offer is anxiety management and that without Christ the secular world's methods are useless. However, this does not mean if someone comes to Jesus then their issues will automatically disappear. It is true that if someone comes to Jesus, then the Holy Spirit will comfort them in their struggle with anxiety disorders, but this does not mean that their anxiety will just disappear. No, the person will deal with their anxiety disorder, or any mental illness, for the rest of their lives. But, with medication and therapy, along with the help of the Holy Spirit, the person will cope with their symptoms a lot better, and they will have hope in this life and the next life too.
I would like to address his points in paragraph four. In that paragraph, Mr. MacArthur says the following,
The goal in the society we live in is managed anxiety, how to somehow get rid of the panic, the stress, the anxiousness that you feel because you are dangling in the midst of a cosmic universe that's inexplicable to you and there are inordinate and underlying subliminal fears and anxieties that rise to the surface very often. And it gets to be pretty serious with many people. About twenty million in America, twenty million adults are annual subjects of the mental illness world, about forty-two billion dollars a year in government costs. They come with anxiety disorders that are given names, even though they are often engaged in what's called co-morbidity which means they overlap and intermingle. It's not as if you just have sort of one area of anxiety. There are several categories. There's what's called General AD, which is General Anxiety Disorder, and I suppose you could throw almost everything in there. And then there's Obsessive Compulsive Anxiety Disorder which means you do really weird things like wash your hands 100 times a day, or pull your hair out, or rub your nose away, or some other inexplicable compulsive kind of behavior. And then there is Panic Disorder in which you go into a high level of panic, rapid-heart palpitation, extreme fear, and there's no real circumstantial reason for it. There is post-traumatic stress AD which is some level of panic which you feel after something that you just went through. There is what's called Social Anxiety Disorder which I guess means you wouldn't have it if you didn't hang around people. And then there is Specific AD, specific phobias about...some people are...go into anxiety if they see a rat or some with a snake or some have anxiety over a storm, some people literally have a phobia with closets, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, acrophobia, heights, etc., etc. And about 50 percent of the United States population experiences some kind of psychiatric anxiety disorder, about half the people in America in their life. A hundred million are estimated worldwide to have panic attacks, just out of nowhere to feel a terrible, terrifying panic. This is huge. And, of course, the medical business is huge to deal with it or to attempt to manage it, and the drug companies, of course, are the main player in how that is managedAgain, I do agree with him when he says that the secular world has a lot to be stressed about. I would even agree with him that Christians have a lot to be at peace about. However, I do not like how he overly simplifies how serious anxiety disorders are. For example, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is much more than something that causes you to do "really weird things like wash your hands 100 times a day, or pull your hair out, or rub your nose away, or some other inexplicable compulsive disorder". Since Mr. MacArthur seems to trivialize this disorder so much, it causes me to wonder if he ever knew anyone who struggled with OCD. I have known many people personally who dealt with this disorder. For example, when I was a teenager, I knew another teen who felt that he had to count all his steps whenever he walked anywhere. If he messed up or miscounted a step, he would have to walk all the way back to where he started and start completely over. I knew another teen back in the day who had to count all of his socks a million times before he went to bed. These two teens literally felt like they had to do certain things and if they failed to do them, then they would suffer such an extreme form of anxiety that would literally cripple them from doing anything else. Also, they believed that if they failed to perform these rituals something horrible will happen either to them or someone they cared about. The only thing that helped these two teens manage their symptoms was medication and therapy. Mr. MacArthur further demonstrates that he does not fully understand Panic disorder. He says that it is when "you go into a high level of panic, rapid heart palpitation, extreme fear, and there is no inexplicable reason for it". He is somewhat correct in this description, but there is much more to Panic disorder than he is describing. I know of a few people in my life who deal with Panic disorder. When I ask them what having a panic attack feels like, they tell me that it literally feels like they cannot breathe and that they are dying. This is a lot more serious than what Mr. MacArthur is describing. He also describes PTSD as just "some level of panic which you feel after something you went through". This statement is very much an oversimplification of PTSD and I cannot understand why anyone would take this seriously. People who deal with PTSD literally feel like they are experiencing their traumatic event all over again when they are triggered. For example, when a woman is raped, she could literally go into a comatose state of mind years later when something happens that reminds her of the rape. Also, when a soldier comes back home from war, he may become extremely violent toward his family whenever he is reminded of something that happened while he was at war. Basically, PTSD is much more serious than what Mr. MacArthur is describing it as. I think the saddest description Mr. MacArthur gives is when he describes Social Anxiety Disorder. He says that these people "wouldn't have it if they did not hang around people", but he completely misses the point of Social Anxiety Disorder. People with this disorder tend to remain stuck in their homes because the very thought of being out in public frightens them so much that they feel like they are safer when they do not go anywhere. The people who suffer from this disorder tend to lose jobs, tend to isolate from friends and family, and tend to become very severely depressed and suicidal.
He then concludes this section by blasting the pharmaceutical companies for making a "big profit" by prescribing those of us with anxiety disorders medication that helps us cope. I do admit that Big Pharma does make a lot of money when psychiatrists prescribe us medication. However, I honestly do not see this as a big deal. I find it quite odd when detractors of the mental health field use this argument as a way to make Big Pharma look bad. The reason I find this odd is that they do not use this same line of reasoning for any other field such as dentistry or cardiology. Those two fields make just as much money, if not more than anyone in the mental health field does. Yet, no one criticizes these two fields as being corrupt. Personally, I believe that any field that is providing a good service that helps people live better, more efficient, lives should be paid handsomely for their hard work. I do not see it as a conflict of interest when Big Pharma makes a ton of money when psychiatrists prescribe medication for their patients any more than it can be a conflict of interest when a dentist prescribes a patient with dentures.
I will stop this blog here so that you can think about what I said and I will continue critiquing Mr. MacArthur's sermon in Part 2 of this series.
I hope that this blog helps you better understand what it is like for people who suffer from anxiety disorders to truly go through. It is disheartening to see a man with as much influence as Mr. MacArthur trivialize the experiences of literally millions of Christians worldwide. Please feel free to leave a comment about what you think below and I thank you for taking the time to read this blog series. May the grace of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ richly bless you all!
-David Lee Chu Sarchet
Christian Mental Health Advocate
Check out the Christ-Centered Mental Health Ministry Website
