RODNEY HIDE: God first. Then the rest.

Emeritus Professor Jenny Te Paa Daniel has just been made a companion of New Zealand's Royal Society. It is said she may well be the country's leading theologian. Michele Hewitson profiled her in the Listener this week, under the headline "doing God's work with a dash of mischief".

As a girl at the cinema her anti-royalist mum told her to sit for God Save the Queen. Her royalist dad told her to stand. She stood. Dad had the money for the ice-creams.

A theologian who understands incentives. Great.

Asked about her God, she said: "I believe in God the father, maker of all things seen and unseen." That's the creed. I believe it too.

She went on: "God is the person that I believe provides a kind of moral compass for my sense of decency, for my sense of what's right and wrong, for my reminders to be kind, to be compassionate."

Discussing the men who run the Anglican Church, she set out her theology. "The theology I believe in is the theology of justice and of compassion and equal rights and inclusivity." And then: "if your position is not morally defensible then it's not theologically defensible."

That last line is the whole problem. Morality is the test that theology must pass. And who sets the test? We do.

That puts us in the judge's chair and God in the dock. He can stay, provided he agrees with us.

She says she has never doubted her faith. I believe her. My quarrel isn't with her heart. It's with her order of things.

Jesus was clear on the order. Asked which was the great commandment, he said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matthew 22:37 to 39)

First and second. Not equal first.

Love of neighbour matters enormously. But it hangs off loving God. Cut it loose and it drifts wherever the fashion of the day blows it.

The social justice warriors love Micah 6:8: "do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God". It's a great verse. But they tend to skip how it starts: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good."

God shows us. We don't show him. And the verse finishes with walking humbly with God, not marching out in front of him with a placard.

That's the danger in "the theology I believe in". Choose your theology to suit your politics and God becomes a rubber stamp. I've watched politicians on all sides do it. God always turns out to have voted for whoever is speaking.

Or whatever war we are fighting.

On the Bible, she says: "The literalists give The Bible a bad name." Without "the critical scholarship to back it up", she warns, it's "rabbit holes galore".

Fair enough. Scripture needs careful reading. But careful reading means sitting under it, not standing over it.

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16)

Reproof. Correction. Scripture is meant to correct us. If it only ever confirms what we thought on the way in, we're not reading the Bible. We're reading ourselves.

Asked about the devil, she said: "I don't want to give anybody the credit for having that much power in the universe."

But whether the devil exists isn't settled by what we'd prefer. Faith starts with what is true, not with what we find agreeable.

William Wilberforce was converted as a young MP. On 28 October 1787 he wrote in his journal: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners."

Note the order. God first. Then the cause.

It cost him. In 1791 the Commons threw out his motion 163 votes to 88. He kept at it. The trade was abolished in 1807. In July 1833 he lived just long enough to hear that the bill abolishing slavery itself was sure to pass. He died days later.

The respectable morality of his day said the trade was necessary. Had Wilberforce tested his theology against that, he'd have gone home. He didn't hold scripture to the standard of his day. He held his day to scripture.

Compassion and justice aren't optional for a Christian. But they are the fruit, not the root. Cut the root and the fruit looks fine for a season. Then it rots.

We can see that with the Anglican Church. Two of its three archbishops marched in the hīkoi against the Treaty Principles Bill, and all three formally opposed it.

Scripture is plain on this. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek,' Paul writes, 'for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men.' The Law gave 'one ordinance' for the native-born and the stranger alike. Equal citizenship is not a Treaty principle the archbishops should fear. It is a biblical one.

The archbishops march to keep two classes of citizenship but not for the unborn. They are deathly silent on abortion. Scripture is again plain: 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee' (Jeremiah 1:5).

The church leaders put what they think is right above what God says is right. And so end in a complete muddle.

As a girl, Professor Te Paa Daniel stood for the anthem because Dad was buying the ice-creams. It's a lovely story.

But in church we don't stand for whoever's buying. We stand for the King.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader