ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

It’s good to celebrate success, and it was lovely to see Adele so richly rewarded at the Brits on Wednesday night. In a world of plastic pop stars, she stands out as a real person, talented yet humble, an example for my daughters hopefully to aspire to.

But I have to admit that awards ceremonies of any kind make me squirm, because while there are always a handful of winners, and some of them, like Adele, worthy - the rest, by association, become ... losers.

It reminds me of that sinking feeling you get when you’re in with a chance of winning anything, and you miss out. I thought I had a chance to win our club’s young cricketer of the year award when I was 15, and the fact that I didn’t confirmed to me I was just a teenage loser.

Come Sunday night, with the Oscars, that habit of training cameras on all the nominees, then holding the gaze on those who haven’t won, seems especially cruel. Even then, at least they’re in the frame. It seems all the black people working in the film industry this year have already lost badly. The ‘system’, as we have seen, is dangerously and cruelly subject to human partiality.

The question, I suppose, is: how much should we value the kind of extrinsic recognition which creates winners and losers - and mostly losers - of us all?

There’s some merit in it, I suppose - it can inspire us to greater things, reward talent, recognise those who’ve reached the top. But there is more to our life’s work than mere competition, isn’t there?

You’d like to think religion could show us a richer way to go, here. It certainly addresses our deeper need for recognition and intrinsic worth - but it’s also subject to our human weakness for turning people into winners and losers: and we can end up pretty quickly, in the process, with the ungenerous belief that the righteous few will win and get the glory, while the rest can go to hell.

But still, there’s a hidden pearl that lies at the heart of Christianity, which is grace. Grace is hard for even people of faith to get their heads around, I think, precisely because it says that we cannot win God’s favour at all - we can only receive it, freely, as it is given freely.

Grace, then, doesn’t just change the rules, but the game. There are no winners or losers in God's eyes.

And for any of us, religious or not - when it comes to the so-called ‘game’ of life - when we make music, or films, or do anything soulfully creative, it can be liberating, if, rather than trying to win favour from others for what we do, we aim to serve and inspire them with our gifts and talents instead.

And there’s nothing to lose with that.

Show less