Christian Vocation in a Time of Rupture

In January, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney characterized our present global moment as a time of “rupture, not transition.” By this he meant that the world is no longer moving steadily from one stable order to another. Instead, the assumptions that once governed global politics, economics, and power have fractured. The era of relative superpower hegemony is giving way to instability and realignment, as old structures that once provided stability and order lose their coherence.

In such a world, middle powers can no longer rely on inherited arrangements for security or flourishing. The guarantees once supplied by dominant powers no longer hold, leaving fragility where stability was once assumed. Carney argued that this moment of rupture leaves middle powers with little choice but to act together—forming new partnerships grounded in shared principles of truth, honesty, and responsibility. He also framed this rupture as a pivotal moment of choice in human history, warning that “nostalgia is not a strategy” in a world that has fundamentally changed.

Taken together, Carney’s diagnosis resonates deeply with Christian theology. Scripture tells us that human beings live in the time of the “now and the not yet”—a world that exists between the times. Now, in the sense that Jesus Christ has already come into the world. He has entered human history, inaugurated the coming of the Kingdom of God, and begun the great work of the renewal of creation through his death on the cross and his resurrection. Because of Jesus, the Kingdom has broken in—the Kingdom where God reigns and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. The Kingdom is here. It is now.

And yet, it is also not yet. The Kingdom has not been fully consummated. Death remains, sin still corrupts, and sorrow and pain persist. Scripture speaks of a coming day when Christ will return to renew all things—a day when resurrection will embrace not only individuals but all creation itself. Until that day, the people of God live in the in-between: the time between redemption and resurrection, between promise and fulfillment, between what Christ has begun and what he will one day complete.

This in-between is a messy middle. Brokenness and injustice are visible everywhere—not only in personal lives and local communities, but also in the public life of nations, where questions of belonging and exclusion strain societies, families are torn apart, political divisions harden, and forms of resentment and hatred grow more openly expressed. Confidence in democratic institutions grows increasingly fragile. The instability and uncertainty of the present moment are not anomalies; they are characteristic of life between the ages—an age in which, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8, creation itself is groaning, caught between suffering and glory.

In times such as these—what has been described as a moment of rupture rather than transition—the question of Christian responsibility becomes unavoidable. When familiar structures are unraveling and long-held commitments to honesty and truth no longer seem secure, what posture does God call the Church to adopt? Is faithfulness found in mourning the passing of an earlier world and its forms of stability? Is it found in withdrawal from public life, waiting quietly for the Kingdom of God to arrive in its fullness? Or is there a different calling altogether—one that neither clings nostalgically to what has been lost nor retreats into passivity, but instead seeks to join in the mission of God for the redemption of his world?

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