The word of wisdom

The passage names a word of wisdom, something said, and does not explain it. These statements can see only the everyday pattern of being brought hard choices and asked what to do. This is not the wisdom Catholic teaching counts among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2); this page is about Paul’s list. Paul names this in the same sentence as healing, miracles and tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-10), and Christians disagree about which of the gifts in that sentence God still gives today.

In an ordinary week it is the person a leadership meeting goes quiet for. It is the friend who asks the question that shows everybody what the argument was actually about. It is the elder who says not yet, and turns out two years later to have been right.

People notice it in themselves by what they are brought. Others come to you with decisions rather than with information. In an argument you find yourself naming the real disagreement instead of taking a side in the stated one. You are asked what to do more often than you are asked what is true.

The gift it is most often confused with is the word of knowledge, which is about what is so rather than about the next move, and with teaching, which hands material over. The everyday mix-up is with intelligence. Scripture ties wisdom to the fear of God rather than to cleverness, and James tells anyone short of it to ask God and promises it will be given (James 1:5), which is not a thing anybody says about being clever.