When Lightman chose twelve people to receive the gene that would transform them, he was doing more than assembling a team. He was establishing a pattern that echoes through human history—and especially through biblical history.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve apostles of Christ. Twelve gates in the New Jerusalem. The number twelve carries weight in the spiritual imagination. It suggests completeness, divine government, and the foundation upon which something eternal can be built.
Why Twelve?
In the story I told my daughter, the number came naturally. I didn't sit down and calculate the biblical significance. But the imagination of someone raised on Scripture tends toward certain patterns. Twelve felt right because twelve has always meant something.
Biblically, twelve represents ordered completeness. It's the number of months in a year, the basic unit of time's cycle. When Jesus chose twelve apostles, he was signaling that he was establishing a new Israel, a new foundation for God's people. When Lightman chose twelve followers, he was (perhaps unconsciously in my telling) echoing this pattern.
The gene passed from Lightman to the twelve. From the twelve, over a thousand years, it multiplied to 144,000 faithful. Twelve thousand from each of the twelve. The mathematics of the kingdom.
The Gene as Gift
In Lightman's world, the gene that grants special abilities is passed on deliberately. Lightman chooses who receives it. This isn't random mutation or accident. It's selection based on worthiness.
This echoes the biblical concept of spiritual gifts. The Spirit gives as the Spirit chooses, but the pattern isn't arbitrary. Those who are faithful with little are given more. Those who steward well become conduits for others.
The twelve didn't earn the gene through their own power. They were chosen because Lightman saw something in them—faithfulness, courage, the capacity to carry light forward across generations. The gift came first, but it required partnership to multiply.
Diversity in Unity
One thing I emphasized to my daughter without making it explicit: the twelve were different from each other. They had different personalities, different strengths, different ways of expressing the power they'd been given.
This matters for children to understand. Being part of a chosen group doesn't mean being identical. The twelve apostles included fishermen and tax collectors, zealots and doubters. They disagreed, argued, and sometimes failed each other. But they were bound by their connection to the one who chose them.
The twelve in Lightman carry this same diversity. United by the gene, distinguished by how they use it. Children hearing this story learn that belonging doesn't require uniformity.
Generational Faithfulness
The most remarkable thing about the twelve isn't their initial reception of the gene. It's what happened afterward. Over a thousand years—generations beyond counting—their descendants maintained faithfulness. The gene passed down. The mission persisted. The light never went out.
This is the great challenge of any movement: continuation beyond the founders. Most visions die with their originators. Most movements fade within a generation or two. But the twelve in Lightman established something that lasted a millennium.
How? Through teaching their children, who taught their children, who taught their children. Through making the story part of their identity. Through waiting for a promise they wouldn't live to see fulfilled.
This is faith. Not just believing something is true, but living as though it's true when all evidence suggests otherwise. The twelve modeled this, and their descendants inherited both the gene and the belief.
The Pattern for Today
We don't have the gene. But we have something similar: truth that can be passed on, values that can be transmitted, stories that carry meaning across generations.
Every parent is a kind of founder. Every child represents a potential line of faithfulness or a break in transmission. The question isn't whether we'll pass something on—we will. The question is whether what we pass on is worth receiving.
The twelve in Lightman received light and gave it to their children. We can do the same. The gene may be fiction, but the pattern is real.