brotherofurs, I appreciate your post, and I understand where you are coming from. I am very aware of such an opinion, and I have asked many people about it, which is how I came to what I said. Clearly, doing a mitzvah solely because G-d commanded us to do so is a level in itself. However, it is not the same as FEELING the mitzvah. There is a difference between doing things by rote and doing things with true understanding and feeling, which is a distinction I didn’t make in my last post.
Doing a mitzvah by rote would be an example like you gave, like putting on tefillin without thinking about it. Let’s analyze that mitzvah: Is there a logical reason we put on tefillin? Something about it that makes complete sense to us? I don’t think so. We do it because G-d said we should. Perhaps there is something mysteriously holy about it which is beyond our understanding. But we do it anyway. Such a mitzvah is a borderline “Chok”, a mitzvah which we don’t understand. Now, for such a mitzvah, the reason we do it is because G-d said we should.
However, there are many, many mitzvos in the Torah that DO make sense to us. Like Wolf’s example, honoring your parents. Other examples would be returning a lost object, loving your neighbor, giving charity, etc. Those are things we fully understand WHY G-d wants us to fulfill. It is because the Torah is a guide for how we should ideally treat people, and that is something morally correct. It makes sense to us. For THOSE mitzvos, doing them without feeling, solely because G-d said we should, is VERY VERY much lacking. On an ideal level, we would want to fulfill those commandments because we understand that they make us better people, they give the beneficiaries happiness, and that is TRULY emulating G-d. Because G-d is only kindness, and He bestows kindness upon us all the time. Why does He do that? Because it is right. It is good. So too, we should bestow kindness on others in order to emulate G-d. NOT simply because He said we should. I hope this distinction is clear enough.