Hardly a week goes by without there being an award show. I know this because I have to cover them. A large part of my job consists of standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope pretending I know which former cast member of The Bill I am talking to. They tend to be in gravity defying frocks designed to help them get their picture in the paper - if they accidentally exit their taxi in a clumsy fashion
Sure a lot of these ceremonies are little more than adverts for the magazines which organise them and until recent phone line scandals forced the industry to go whiter than white, the old adage of ‘he who turns up wins’ was very true. But the famous do care about them. Witness Eddie Murphy walking out of the Oscars after he lost to Alan Arkin for best supporting actor or Kanye West's now legendary stage invasion at the MTV Video Awards - where he was so upset at Beyonce losing out he ruined Taylor Swift's big moment
Award shows are a way of quantifying fame, bringing a momentary sense of order to an industry forever in flux. Whether an academy has decided or the public has voted, for a period of time there is a definitive answer. Someone is the best actor/ has made the best album/ possesses the best bottom. My own award for Most Useless Category Ever goes to Most Popular TV Contender brought in at last year's National TV Awards in the UK. It did not return in 2007, thus cruelly denying Nikki from Big Brother 7 the chance to defend her title.
For an award with a real sense of permanence, it is best to look to the US. Almost every sector of the entertainment industry now has its own Hall of Fame. The best known example is probably the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (Abba, Genesis and The Stooges are up for inclusion this year). The idea here is that there is a canon of people who have achieved so much in their field that they have won the right to be awarded for ever. No young upstart is going to come along next year and take the title away. Here fame can live forever (although thankfully Bruno, Coco and the rest of The Kids From Fame have not been elected).
The Hall of Fame idea is generally accepted to have originated in 1939 with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. However, a look in the Bible at Hebrews 11 would reveal that a Hall of Fame was created around 1872 years earlier. In roughly AD 67 the unknown writer of Hebrews compiled the ‘Faith Hall of Fame’ – a list of people whose faith in God was so great that their lives were being held up as examples thousands of years later.
The chronological list starts with Abel (singled out for the quality of his choice of sacrifice to God). It moves through Noah (career highlights: godly fear leading to excellent ark building) and then picks out Sarah the first woman to qualify (she memorably had such faith that she was able to conceive despite her years). It continues right on through to Gideon, Barak and Jephthah, although their induction ceremony is rather curtailed as the author says they have done so much he doesn't have time to go into it, as if the credits on the TV coverage are already rolling.
The crucial point with this Hall of Fame is that it is not about celebrating what these people achieved in their own strength. They lived lives which brought glory to God's name, not their own.
The passage highlights how their faith is all the more remarkable because they had a belief in the ultimate fulfilment of the covenant's eternal promises despite Jesus having not yet been sent. They were looking forward to a promised salvation, whereas we are in the privileged position of being able to look back at the fulfilment of the promise.
In an era when Award Shows hold so much prominence, with the Oscars rivalling the Superbowl for the year's biggest global television audience, it is a humbling reminder to read back over this Hall of Fame. Here is list of people who were often not at all popular during their lives, but who went on to win the biggest prize. And when they said, "I just want to thank God..." they really, really meant it.
Colin Paterson
Colin is entertainment correspondent for BBC Radio 5 Live
This article was reproduced with permission from www.artisaninitiatives.org