Subjugating your ego

Yesterday, I read an article published in the JPost by Eliezer Whartman in which he states that one doesn't have to choose between Orthodoxy and secularism because he provides a middle ground alternative, namely Reconstructionism. He states that all Orthodox factions have the common denominator of intolerance while Reconstructionism is enlightened Judaism. He recommends that Reform and Conservative rabbis be given the same rights as Orthodox rabbis.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804535595&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Later in the day, I came across an article entitled The Jigsaw Puzzle of Creation : A Jewish View Against Proposition 8 by Rabbi Laura Geller.
As Rabbi Brad Artson has written: "We have reviewed a range of rabbinic reasons given for opposing same-sex acts. We have concluded that homosexuality is not intrinsically unnatural, sick, disgusting, destructive of family life, devoid of the possibility of children, or hedonistic. We are dealing, therefore, not with a previously considered and previously outlawed phenomena, but with a situation never before encountered in Jewish law. Modern homosexual love and stable homosexual couples are different in significant respects from anything known in Torah or Rabbinic Judaism."
In other words, what the Torah prohibits has nothing to do with contemporary gay or lesbian relationships and therefore has no bearing on the discussion. What does matter are core values that emerge out of Jewish tradition, including the fundamental notion that all human beings are created in the image of God and mishpat ehat yihe'eh lachem – that law should be applied equally to all, citizen and stranger alike.
http://www.tebh.org/clergy/pdf/No%20prop%208%20sermon.pdf

The author of the above article has decided that she is the arbiter of what
G-d means. If a law is not rational, according to limited human intelligence, or outmoded, it can be abolished. It would seem that repentance and guilt would be unnecessary because any action one wishes to take can be justified. The words of the Torah can be twisted so that whatever one wants to do is sanctioned by the Creator. G-d's commandments were not given for eternity, but rather, until a Reconstructionist rabbi deems otherwise. A human being's rationalization is paramount and supercedes the words
of G-d.

This past weekend, Hamodia published an article by Moshe Gutman about Harav Ika Yisraeli, a Tel Aviv artist who gave up a successful career to embrace Torah Judaism.
The journalist describes how Ika went to learn at the Diaspora Yeshiva, headed by Rabbi Moshe Goldstein. When he read in a sefer about the mitzvah of eating korbon Pesach, he was taken aback as he was a vegetarian and wondered how he could be obligated to eat meat.
Rabbi Goldstein answered him with wise words that can apply to each and every Jew.
"...If so, you'll learn something new - to eat meat because the Torah says so, not because you think it's right or isn't right. There is Someone Who has decided for you, rendering your own decisions insignificant when He deems otherwise. From now on you will accept Hashem's authority and cancel out what you used to think. This is the turning point in teshuvah: subjugating your ego."

Subjugating your ego is part and parcel of true Judaism. There are those, however, who wish to decide for themselves whether G-d's law is just. If it is not to their liking, their healthy sense of egoism allows them to do away with Jewish tradition that has been passed down from father to son for generations.
In Shemoneh Esrei, we say "our G-d and the G-d of our fathers." Apparently the G-d of our fathers doesn't exist for those who wish to reconstruct a religion.