Magic After Modernity - El

He noticed it first in the deserts in millennia past. There was a time when mountains trembled when he spoke. Seas divided themselves out of obedience. Cities collapsed beneath judgment. Empires feared dreams because dreams could carry his voice. “Be not afraid,” suggested his emissaries, carrying both judgement and news. 

From there, it had become harder to keep his adherents’ numbers sufficiently large to keep him in power. He even had a son whose miracles ranged from raising the dead to changing water to wine. He had caused his son to suffer persecution and rise from the dead to convince others of his power.

Now?

Now his miracles were… administrative.

A woman misses the last bus but finds another route home safely, a surgeon pauses for one extra second and notices the bleed. Rain arrives three hours before a wildfire reaches a town. Keys appear where someone had  already checked twice.

Tiny things. Barely visible things. The kind of events people explain away with coincidence, probability, or luck. The machinery of creation still answered him, but only faintly now, like an old kingdom responding to a king whose banners no longer fly in most provinces.

Belief had once been a river – a fountain from which He had gotten his immense power. He commanded parthenons and thousands of houses of worship that enforced belief.

Not perfect belief of course;  humans were never perfect. What mattered was intent and attention. Consistent rituals that spoke his name  mattered:  Hymns, the breaking of bread, the offer of wine, the families praying around the dinner table, thankful for the food they attributed to him.  Entire civilizations once bent their calendars around him with holiday and religious observance. Fear, devotion, guilt, hope, awe -  all of it fed the enormous metaphysical gravity that allowed miracles to rupture reality and take the world stage, not the stage of your local county fair.

But centuries passed, and now people argued in his name more than they listened to it. People argued over meaning and dogma, instead of his overall message of love. They weaponized him more than worshipped him. Politicians invoked him. Corporations marketed him. Armies painted symbols on missiles and claimed heaven approved. Each act hollowed something out; not because he demanded perfection, but because belief without sincerity is structurally weak. Hollow faith carries very little weight.

The worst part was not the fading power. It was the helplessness with which he had to watch. Once, his name, his book, his places of worship  had once carried consequences for cruelty committed beneath sacred banners. Priests could overturn kings. The fading power meant the arrogant could no longer be held accountable through his power alone.

Now he watched men commit atrocities while claiming divine endorsement, and there was almost nothing he could do beyond the smallest bit of heavenly sabotage:

A strategy document misplaced. A microphone failing during a rally. A witness arriving unexpectedly, or a guilty conscience surfacing at 3:13 in the morning like an ember refusing to die but not hot enough to create a flame.

Some nights he walked anonymously among people because it was easier than listening to prayers distorted into slogans. An old man in waiting rooms. A quiet figure feeding birds in city parks. A stranger paying for someone’s groceries when their card declined.

The ancient authority still lingered around him in flashes. Children occasionally stared in his direction too long. Dogs sometimes refused to bark, instead wagging their tail when he approached. Certain kinds of broken-hearted people recognized him immediately without understanding why and it gave them strength.

But he could no longer split oceans for nations that would charge admission for the crossing by morning.

Perhaps that was the final miracle left to him: He could not change the world through force or by killing their first born  – that time had passed when belief left the world. But perhaps he could help find enough people who could keep humanity from becoming entirely incapable of gentleness. Maybe someday, people would choose empathy over power and the cycle of hatred would stop.

He smiled at the thought as he left a $20 bill in the pocket of someone who’d run out of gas so they could get to work.