This seems like the kind of faith I’m exercising

This isn’t just body language (i.e. culture), it’s also the head talking. In our multi-stake conference on Sunday, Elder Ballard strongly implied that people like me are spiritually dead, and said that study, prayer and fasting would keep that from happening. The contrapositive of this formula – if you’re spiritually dead, then you didn’t do enough – is an easy conclusion. For adults, reasoning by contrapositives is natural: if you know “if it rains, then the grass gets wet” is true, and the grass isn’t wet, then obviously it didn’t rain.

What you said here reminded me of a chart I saw outlining Fowler’s stages of faith, linked here.

In the description for stage 4 it says something interesting.

Ironically, the Stage 3 people usually think that Stage 4 people have become “backsliders” when in reality they have actually moved forward.

If that much is true I’d expect Elder Ballard to say something like that. He is relating a truth that pertains to his worldview. He’s playing his part in the cosmic dance. Resistance someone can use to build up strength, or strength to help someone deal with another type of resistance. This would also explain why the answers from the top almost always involve an attempt to shore up a member’s commitment levels. Do the Sabbath more. Read the scriptures more. Pray more. Etc.

And at what point is enough enough?

You’re touching on one of my “deals” about whether people should stay engaged with the church or move on. I don’t know the answer either but to make my comment I’ll piggyback on the story about your aunt.

There are people that see your aunt’s sacrifice as being the right decision, she did not give up when the going got tough. If your aunt left her abusive husband there would be people that saw your aunt’s decision to leave her husband as being completely justified. Sometimes the people in the “made the right decision by staying” camp frown on the aunts that leave their husbands in those types of situations. Sometimes the people in the “made the right decision by leaving” camp frown on the aunts that stay with their husbands in those types of situations.

Which aunts make the right choice? Is there a correct choice and a wrong choice?

I think the need to be validated weighs heavily on our decision making process and on how we evaluate decisions we’ve already made. We want to feel like we’re making or made the right choice and we often reach out to other people to help us make that determination. It’s human nature.

I know this is StayLDS and everything but one thing that bothers me is when remaining in the church after experiencing a faith crisis is presented as the more enlightened path, as if the choice to leave is the lesser path. It’s a serious pet peeve of mine… and I’m at a place in my journey where I’ve made the decision to stay. To me it’s not that one way is correct and the other incorrect. They are just different paths, with no inherit good or bad associated with either decision.

So to me asking when is enough enough might be less about how much more of something I can stand and more about when I finally feel free to make a decision that’s free of worry about how others might view me.

Has the Church been faithful to me? It hasn’t, but unknowingly, and with a self-assurance that borders on narcissism, so of course it would say it’s been absolutely faithful. If it could speak, it would probably say something like, “I’ve done all these great things for you, so the least you could do is believe me. If you don’t, it’s because you didn’t obey me enough, and if you don’t keep quiet about it, I’ll accuse you and maybe even divorce you so everyone knows how horrible you are.”

I understand the sentiment. I’ve often seen parallels between aspects of church culture and the type of abuse that can be inflicted by someone with narcissistic personality disorder. “Splitting” is often present in people with NPD. Splitting is viewing someone or something as being all good or all bad, everything is either black or white with no shades of gray. Another trait is a feeling of uniqueness and superiority when comparing oneself to others. I think these traits are present, to some degree or other, largely because the church is a “stage 3” organization that places a great deal of emphasis on exclusive claims to divine truth and authority. It’s not that the culture or the leaders (or people that have NPD for that matter) set out to abuse people, I think it’s more of a natural byproduct that results from some of the core beliefs of things being either right or wrong and a belief in there being such a thing as a one True church.

To be fair it’s not just an issue with LDS church culture. We confront these issues in all walks of life. Church isn’t exempt from the ills of all walks of life.

I’ve averaged about two hours of useful work per work day since November. (FC was mid-October.)

Not trying to detract from anything you said, but in your intro post you mentioned that it’s hard to get medication where you are. Are you still off your meds? Could that possibly be related to, or at least contributing to, the lack of productivity?

That’s always a pertinent question. I’m taking the right medication now, and I’ve had a good day here and there while doing some pretty boring work. It seems to be doing its job.