The question is do you like playing the D&D paladin... we've debated this before but I still stand by the assertion that what you want to play is a divinely powered mercenary or warrior... not a paladin in the pre-4e D&D sense.
D&D didn't invent the paladin archetype. Romantic authors of the high middle ages did, and it has been reinforced and perhaps in some ways developed over time since then.
When I play a paladin I have zero interest in playing a divinely powered mercenary. In fact that is the interpretation I place on the sort of paladin you and others have described upthread, one who receives divine power only provided that s/he sticks to a code that is, from the point of view of the universe, arbitrary - arbitrary because, from the point of view of the universe, there is no reason to be LG rather than (say) CE.
When I play a paladin I play a character who believes in the reality of providence, and hence disavows all dishonourable and unjust conduct. Claims that evil must be done so that good can ultimately triumph are, for the character I am interested in playing, flawed for two reasons: first, they are empirically false; second, they are betrayals of faith in that divine providence which ensures that those who act morally will not be betrayed.
In modern fantasy literature the best-known exponent of this world view is Tolkien (through Aragorn and Gandalf as his mouthpieces). Aragorn is a quintessential paladin. Obviously so are many of the knights of the Round Table (eg Galahad, Percival, Lancelot before his fall) and knights of the Carolignian romances also.
These are the sorts of characters I want to play. The D&D paladin captures them very well mechanically - a warrior who is divinely bless, can heal with a touch and smite his/her enemies - except that the alignment mechanics get in the way, by either ruling out from the get-go the cosmological world view that underpins the class, or (on a different approach to them) turning the character more-or-less into the GM's puppet.
