The only argument with a professor I ever had happened in graduate school. I had attended a Christian undergraduate program, and was very hesitant about this graduate program at another Christian college in the same state–I didn’t want to look like a complete religious nut to any future employers, but I went ahead with it anyways because it was the only counseling program in the state that allowed students to meet the requirements for dual licensing (LMFT and LPC).

I knew on day one I had made a mistake. Unlike my undergraduate school that maybe prayed before class then mostly left God out of it, these classes were like three hour long Bible studies. Everything they taught was filtered through the Bible, and many of our assignments related in some way to the Bible (for one class, I had to write every single Scripture verse that dealt with marriage, then write a statement about it. I hated the assignment, and used some sarcasm in several of my statements. The professor wrote comments such as “great insights!” next to some of these. Oh, dear!) Of course, most of the professors had not had any theological training, so their Biblical ideas were mostly their opinions with no  intelligent theology behind them. I considered transferring, but once I realized I would have to start the program from scratch, I thought I could tough it out long enough to get my license, then conduct therapy how I wished.

One day, however, I had enough of one professor. It was obvious that in his education, he had never thought about whether or not an idea made sense or done any research on his own. He simply parroted what his favorite professor taught him. One of these ideas is that some of the more serious mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, were environmentally caused. (Almost none of my fellow classmates had psychology degrees, and neither did he.) For an entire semester, I had listened to him rant, “How do they know it’s caused by genetics? Parenting patterns and environments are also passed down from one generation to the next.” Now I had to hear this idiocy during the summer, too.(I was also mad because I had made an A on every assignment in his spring class, and still wound up with a B in the class. The only explanation was my participation grade–I had been so irritated that I had barely said a word during the entire semester, and he had a ridiculous amount of participation points.) So I decided to participate. I raised my hand.

“They get the genetics theory from adoption and twin studies. It’s not just an assumption based on different family members having the same mental illness.” (Actually, I had an undergraduate professor draw an excellent chart illustrating how genetics and environment work together to produce mental illness. I wish I could reproduce it here!)

He stared at me for a moment. “Okay, okay. But can you think of anything else that might cause it to run in families like that that’s not genetics?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “Though there’s no real proof for it, it could be something that happens in the womb or very, very early in life.”

“Okay, but I can think of one more thing that you’re missing,” he answered. I thought for a moment. “Anyone?” he asked. No one could think of anything. “Through sin,” he said triumphantly.

What? I thought. Through sin? Is he nuts? He started to move on. I had had more than enough however (keep in mind that this was far from the first time he had mentioned these ludicrous ideas) and raised my hand. “Excuse me, sorry to drag this back up, but how does sin transfer from a mother to a child when the child is adopted, and therefore, the environment is not passed on?”

“Well, through the bloodlines!”

I stared at him. “That’s genetics.”

His face turned red. “Well, well. . .” he stammared. “What’s your definition of genetics?”

My eyebrows shot up and my mouth dropped open. Now I was speechless. I guess he realized the ridiculousness of his statement, because he waved his arms around and said, “Okay, I see your point,” and then moved on.

I got an A.

Tags: Christian counseling, psychiatry, psychology

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