Tleilaxu Face Dancers and the Righteousness of Christ


"In his life and death Jesus Christ fulfilled all the righteousness that God’s law requires. When we come to God in Christ, we are clothed in the righteousness that Christ fulfilled. Our works merit no favor from God. Only Christ, and his righteousness credited to us, merits God’s favor. And this we receive by faith, and faith alone." (John Piper) (See Galatians 3:27 and Romans 13:14)

Analogies always break down, but I found an interesting parallel:

In the Dune novels by Frank Herbert, a secretive organization known as the Bene Tleilax used genetic manipulation to create human shapeshifters called face dancers, who could pretend to be other people, which of course caused much political intrigue. As their technology became more advanced, the face dancers could not only change their face, but the size and shape of their entire body, and eventually even their minds. The problem came when they became such perfect copies of other people, that they forgot that they were face dancers and actually believed that they really were the people they were copying (which of course rendered them ineffective to the purposes of the Tleilaxu). For all practical purposes, they became who they were supposed to be.

When Christ enters our lives, we 'legally' become children of God and are instantly declared righteous (justification), then His Spirit works in our lives to make us righteous (sanctification) through a gradual process that takes the rest of our mortal lives (which is why we still sin in this life), until we are made perfectly righteous in the Resurrection (glorification). We are declared children of God, then He works in our lives to make us more like Him. We become who we are.

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