Hulk Hogan- source of wisdom?

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ricmat

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Hulk Hogan might be one of the persons I least expected to have valuable spiritual insights, but I came across these words of his in an Instragram post. I think he hits the nail on the head.

Hulk Hogan said…

In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship. God said, "you want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theaters. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You don’t want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you can’t go to church…

2 Chronicles 7:13-14
13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;
14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Maybe we don’t need a vaccine, Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the ONLY thing in the world that really matters. Jesus."

AMEN to that brother! I was thinking the same. I would also add to the list above, “You want to worship pleasure, I will shut down Disneyland and Las Vegas. You don’t have time to pray, I will give you all the time you need.” And I would also add Jonah 3:10 When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.

Rhetorical question: I haven’t heard any kind of call to repentance from any Bishops, or the Vatican. Why not?
 
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Okay, I have a friend of mine, my friend Jamie, who is out of work because he is recovering from a car wreck, and he has been sending me wrestling promos. I don’t know about Hulk Hogan being a source of wisdom, but my goodness he can be funny sometimes, I know that. Which is really odd, when you watch promos of him from Japan.
 
ricmat said:
Rhetorical question: I haven’t heard any kind of call to repentance from any Bishops, or the Vatican. Why not?
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Because the Catholic Church does not teach that plagues and other natural disasters are punishments from God for man’s current sins. It teaches that plagues, disasters and other hardships happen because of man’s sinful nature, basically Adam’s fall and everything that came after meant that we had to live in a difficult world that contained hardship and death and we couldn’t continue living happily in the Garden of Eden. It doesn’t say that we had a pandemic (or typhoon, earthquake, tornado outbreak, tsunami, forest fires, other naturally-occurring disaster) because people committed sin in the secular world or weren’t thinking of Jesus enough. That would be like when the AIDS epidemic happened and some churches (fortunately not Catholic) claimed that AIDS was God’s punishment for those who led sinful lives.

While I agree with Hulk Hogan and many Catholic bishops and priests on the point that we can use this time of isolation to build our spiritual lives and get more in touch with Jesus and learn to trust in him more (Archbishop Perez presented a whole six-part online retreat on this subject a couple weeks back), it’s a bit far-fetched to say God shut down Disneyland because people were worshipping pleasure. Plenty of good Catholic families might go there and take the kids, the grands etc for a nice fun vacation. The Lord doesn’t frown on that and has no reason to shut it down.

Also, the idea of people investing in the markets being money-worshippers is just bizarre. Most people I know invest in the markets so they will have money to live on in retirement. Much of the time, the money ends up going to pay for their health care, assisted living, nursing home etc. It’s not like they’re trying to become the Wolf of Wall Street and go out to bars and make it rain.

Many of the people who push this kind of simplistic retributive thinking are those who have a fire-and-brimstone conception of God, not a loving father conception of God.
 
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this is true, God cursed the earth (nature, natural world) because of man’s sin, and the disobedience of gods (angels/demons) and their mis-management is part of it, but also does not Scripture teach that God can give famine and plague due to sin? it does very explicitly, in many verses, and that the success of nations is in His hands? it also says this many times, and also that wealth and poverty are given by him? good and evil come from the Lord’s hand, so in a way, it is because of this i think.

the problem is, without revelation, we don’t know WHAT a particular event is from/for, maybe God allowed Satan to strike our flesh like Job, as a test to show what kind of people we are (wisdom tries her sons by fire, and the like verses), maybe God let the gods (demons/angels, I just use the scriptural term for these beings though, bene elim, etc) fail and a plague to happen, maybe it is God allowing this due to sins or a particular sin (aka “sending a punishment” because he doesn’t directly will evil like this, but rather withdraws himself in a way so it happens), or MAYBE it is just human error, maybe someone messed up and we are paying the penalty of their negligence (winnie the pooh I see you).

it would be a mistake to elevate oneself to the mind of God and proclaim what a particular event means, without divine revelation. for all we know it could be because of YOU (generic you, not necessarily you Tis, but anyone reading this, even me) that God sent this, as we are all sinners always deserving of judgment and never deserving of mercy, but God in his graciousness gives us mercy, praise be to Jesus
 
I would add: “You don’t have time to finish your house work; I will give you all the time you need.” And perhaps: “You love to eat; I will deprive you of your ability to access the food you love so much.”
 
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krayzevuze said:
it would be a mistake to elevate oneself to the mind of God and proclaim what a particular event means, without divine revelation.
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We have a ton of divine revelation approved by the Church that says our God is a God of mercy.

We also have a ton of Church teaching that says God is a loving father and is not out to “zap” people.

We further have a lot of people who commit sins on earth with impunity, and people who live very good holy lives who suffer greatly.

God has a plan and obviously pandemics along with every other natural disaster is part of his plan. But since we don’t know what his plan is, then we cannot presume that he allows this to happen for retribution for sin, any more than we can presume that he’s allowing it to happen for some other reason (example: to warn of the end times, to take a certain number of souls to Heaven who he thinks need to go there, to bring about some ultimate good from forcing us all into isolation etc)

The Church teaches that we should always be repenting. It does not tie repentance to natural disasters, and it shouldn’t because there’s just as much if not more need for repentance when everything is going great.

As for Scripture, much of the “God’s people were sinful so God allowed X catastrophe to happen to them” sort of thing is in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is helpful for understanding the background to the main point of our faith, which is the appearance of Jesus, but we apply the New Covenant these days, and we do not have nor does the Church teach a relationship with God where he zaps people to death for being bad.
 
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Hulk’s okay, but I really want to hear what Mr. T has to say on this matter.

Perhaps Dog the Bounty Hunter will also weigh in.
 
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Also, it’s not God who is denying us these things. It’s just a prudent decision of most governments.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
We have a ton of divine revelation approved by the Church that says our God is a God of mercy.
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And we have a ton of divine revelation approved by the Church that says our God is a God which wants a loving relationship with us. And that if we misuse the “talents” and resources he gives us, then he will take it away.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Many of the people who push this kind of simplistic retributive thinking are those who have a fire-and-brimstone conception of God, not a loving father conception of God.
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“Simplistic retributive thinking” – This statement in itself seems to me to be “simplistic wishful thinking”.

God chastises those He loves.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Also, the idea of people investing in the markets being money-worshippers is just bizarre.
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I know quite a few people who live only for more money. If making money is more important to you than God, then money is your god.

Nobody said anything about money markets and retirement - you made that up.
Tis_Bearself said:
it’s a bit far-fetched to say God shut down Disneyland because people were worshipping pleasure.
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Living in SoCal, I’ve met many people who have yearly Disneyland passes, and go to Las Vegas every weekend (when they’re not at Disneyland). Some of the Disneyland people are in their 70’s with no children or grandchildren (they were DEVASTATED when Disneyland closed) and some of the Las Vegas goers are family folks with young children and teens. Every spare penny, and every spare minute is used in the pursuit of pleasure. Our God is not on their radar. They have no time for our God. Too busy to pray. Too busy to think at all about God.
Tis_Bearself said:
We also have a ton of Church teaching that says God is a loving father and is not out to “zap” people.
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You made this up. It has not been suggested in this thread that God is out to zap people.
Tis_Bearself said:
We further have a lot of people who commit sins on earth with impunity, and people who live very good holy lives who suffer greatly.
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Of course. Did anybody say otherwise?
 
ricmat said:
And that if we misuse the “talents” and resources he gives us, then he will take it away.
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Presumably after death. Like I said, there are a gazillion people who misused their talents and resources their whole life and God just let them go on their merry way, while the holiest person in the room got to live in poverty and die a painful death from cancer.
 
As a somewhat related item –

A week or two ago, on the NBC nightly news, Lester Holt (the anchor) showed profound grief and astonishment that the number of corona virus deaths in the US from the beginning of the pandemic had reached 3000. I was tempted to send him a message reminding him that every single day for the last 47 years there have been 3000 un-necessary deaths in the US due to abortion.

Lester many not have been aware of that. But God certainly is aware of it.

How long is God going to let us get away with it? Certainly whatever pandemic or other disaster occurs, we deserve much worse.

Another semi-related item - Catholic Governor Cuomo of New York said that he/we had flattened the virus curve in NYC. Prayer didn’t do it. God didn’t do it. We did it. This seems to me to be a very bad move…
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Presumably after death. Like I said, there are a gazillion people who misused their talents and resources their whole life and God just let them go on their merry way, while the holiest person in the room got to live in poverty and die a painful death from cancer.
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Suffering in this life is an opportunity to partially redeem ourselves, and others. It’s one of the “talents” he gives us.
 
These kinds of things are sent or permitted by God to draw us closer to Him. Those who suffer some tribulation at particular time should not be seen as worse sinners than those who don’t, but we should certainly see tribulations as means by which God helps to purify us. Calls to repentance during such times are common in Scripture and the long life of the Church.

See Hebrews 12. It is to discipline us so that we may be saved in the end. Saying He doesn’t do this means He has abandoned us to our sins (cf. Ezek. 16:42; Heb. 12:8).

St. Thomas More sums this up as follows:
If we lay first, for a sure ground, a very fast faith, whereby we believe to be true all that the scripture saith (understood truly, as the old holy doctors declare it and as the spirit of God instructeth his Catholic Church), then shall we consider tribulation as a gracious gift of God, a gift that he specially gave his special friends; a thing that in scripture is highly commended and praised; a thing of which the contrary, long continued, is perilous; a thing which, if God send it not, men have need to put upon themselves and seek by penance; a thing that helpeth to purge our past sins; a thing that preserveth us from sins that otherwise would come; a thing that causeth us to set less by the world; a thing that much diminisheth our pains in purgatory; a thing that much increaseth our final reward in heaven; the thing with which all his apostles followed him thither; the thing to which our Saviour exhorteth all men; the thing without which he saith we be not his disciples; the thing without which no man can get to heaven.
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Our spiritual leader should be pointing out that a pestilence is permitted or sent by God for this purpose. Instead, I have seen some high profile ones say it is nature punishing us for our eco-deeds. That is pure superstition.
 
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