Creation and Providence form a beautiful complementary pair of statements that can be formulated to describe the status of the entire universe, human nature as part of that universe, or Christian believers as part of humankind.
Both Creation and Providence have their exaggerated forms. The essential teaching of Creation is the reality of the creatures and their significance to the Creator. The exaggeration of human Creation leads to a notion of the absolute, autonomous existence of humans without God, or dependence on God. In secular terms this is exaggerated into existentialism.
The essential teaching of the Christian doctrine of Providence is the sustaining, loving rule of God moment-by-moment in the world. In modern terms, this view is reduced to naturalism. Naturalism sees the universe as a closed, self-determining system. The system may contain deterministic processes, accidents, and chaotic processes, but no purpose or direction; it is a vast machine running to nowhere. Humans are merely a part of this vast machine.
C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures described a dualism in modern life between the literary culture and the technical or scientific culture. Existentialism has been expressed mostly by the literary culture, the "magicians" trying to find a way to exalt human distinctiveness over nature. Naturalism has been expressed mostly by scientists: the "technicians", intent to place human nature fully within the mechanism of nature (reductionism). Neither of these approaches has been very successful at providing a description of human nature that is at home in the universe, yet not oppressed by that "universe's unfeeling immensity" (in Jacques Monod's phrase).
The relationship of God to Human Nature is more complex and interactive than these simplistic views. Since we are creatures, we can only comprehend the creation from our creaturely vantage point. In dealing with such a profound subject as God's relationship with the creation, "we see through a glass darkly" (I Cor. 13:12).