Many listeners to our podcast may be familiar with the band, “Sixpence None the Richer”. Probably their most popular song was “Kiss Me”, which was a regular feature in the nineties on shows like Dawson’s Creek and movies like She’s All That:
However, what many listeners may not realize is that the band’s name was inspired by none other than C.S. Lewis! In Mere Christianity Lewis discusses the subject of faith and, at the end of the chapter, he writes the following:
It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.” Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)
Lewis’ point is that we bring nothing truly “ours” when we come to the bargaining table with God. Everything we have and everything we do for Him, ultimately came from Him in the first place:
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)
