Throughout all of Church history there has been a great debate as to what degree things automatically happen, with the tilt leaning both in society and in theology toward fatalism. It reminds me of the story of a classic theologian who believed that everything was preordained by God. He was coming down the stairs from his study one day when he tripped and tumbled all the way to the bottom. When he got up, he brushed himself off and said, "Well, I'm glad that's over," presuming there was no way he could have avoided falling because it must have been foreordained.There's no such thing revealed in the Scripture, but neither is there any such thing as the human capacity to make things happen by our own power. All you and I have is the power of choice, and even that does not provide the engine to bring about what is needed to make our lives work. I can push my car only a little bit and not very far. Certainly not up hill. But I can choose to turn on the engine.
The vanity of the flesh is the supposition that we can on our own achieve the best purposes for our lives. That's not an invitation to passivity any more than faith in the providence of God is a call to fatalism. Fatalism and passivity can be opposites, or they can go together: "Well, I'm just along for the ride." We're on a journey with the Lord to a place only He can take us, but there are things we need to do, choices we need to make, while we are on board.
