The problems with believing in fate or Providence start to become real when bad things happen to you.
If you imagine that the universe is conspiring to help you when things go right, you can also imagine that the universe is conspiring to hurt you when things go wrong, and that’s terrifying. Ordinary failure and misfortune is easier to recover from than the creeping fear that you’ve angered God. I’ve been there; it sucks.
That seems to depend on the nature of the belief, though. Some people with a belief of fate seem to gain strength from it even during misfortune, thinking not “the universe is out to get me”, but something like “well I guess this was the universe’s way of [setting me on a better path / reminding me not to take for granted what I have / insert-some-other-benefit-here]”.
If you have sufficiently strong faith in the universe being benevolent, you can probably find some positive angle from any event and focus on that.
The problems with believing in fate or Providence start to become real when bad things happen to you.
If you imagine that the universe is conspiring to help you when things go right, you can also imagine that the universe is conspiring to hurt you when things go wrong, and that’s terrifying. Ordinary failure and misfortune is easier to recover from than the creeping fear that you’ve angered God. I’ve been there; it sucks.
That seems to depend on the nature of the belief, though. Some people with a belief of fate seem to gain strength from it even during misfortune, thinking not “the universe is out to get me”, but something like “well I guess this was the universe’s way of [setting me on a better path / reminding me not to take for granted what I have / insert-some-other-benefit-here]”.
If you have sufficiently strong faith in the universe being benevolent, you can probably find some positive angle from any event and focus on that.