In his prime, professional wrestling legend Hulk Hogan was one of the most recognizable strongmen on the planet. His recent passing made national news even in Japan, where he was beloved by generations of fans. As a world-famous muscle-flexer and, in his last year, champion of winning political causes in his home country, it was perhaps fitting that some chose to pay tribute to him online with the phrase “Rest in Power.”

But Hogan’s death isn’t the first time this reprisal of the traditional obituary epigram “Rest in Peace” (from the Latin requiescat in pace) has been used. I first encountered it at times of racial unrest during the past decade in America, when activists who had died were sent off with raised fists and exhortations to “rest in power.” The implication, I think, is that the social and political struggles which shaped the course of one’s earthly life would define one in the life to come. Or maybe the phrase means that those here below will not give up the fight but rather redouble efforts when leading lights are snuffed out. A little research reveals that the phrase originated in Californian subculture in the late 1980s, and from there has been taken on by various groups eager to rally supporters when death takes a member from their ranks.

The most striking thing about “rest in power” is that those who use it confess, unwittingly, naivete about what really happens to people when they die. More than naivete—indifference, really. “Rest in power” is another way to say “We’ll keep on keeping on down here, even though you’ll no longer be around to help us.” It’s the opposite of saying “rest in peace.” That phrase, however trite it might sound after centuries of use, is focused on the soul of the departed. It is a prayer, albeit an abbreviated one, that someone will go well into the world beyond. “Rest in power” is absurd by contrast. People who die don’t have power; they face judgment. They don’t keep going to marches and singing protest songs in the hereafter. Their earthly life is done, and they must account for it somehow. They rely on the intercessions of others. They are at the mercy of forces entirely beyond their control. Or, if one chooses to argue that humans have no souls, then the departed one simply disappears. He or she gets snuffed out. And where’s the power in that?

“Rest in power” may be urban slang, part of an ever-evolving internet lexicon, but as a notion of death it’s much more widespread than might appear. A few years ago, an acquaintance died and when I went to what I thought would be his funeral I discovered that I had stumbled into a “Celebration of Life.” Since then, I’ve noticed the phenomenon more than a few times. The word “funeral,” which has the somber overtones one would expect of a gathering marked by the earthly demise of a loved one, seems to have been largely replaced by “Celebration of Life,” as though it were an offense against our age of positive thinking to admit that people leave us forever and we are sad when they do. At a Celebration of Life, people tell stories about the departed, recall funny things he or she used to do, sing their favorite songs, and in general remember the deceased as a living person—not as a cold body in a coffin. “It’s what he or she would have wanted,” we often hear at such occasions. Yes, that is probably true.

But what the dead person certainly didn’t want was to die. There is an unbridgeable chasm between what we humans want and what we get. We want to live forever, but we all get cut off along the way. This is what funerals are for in the first place. We don’t rest in power, not even while alive. We are always one breath, one heartbeat away from meeting our maker. We should be grateful to have been born at all, and to have been given the gift of a succession of other days among the living. None of it is of our doing—every life is a sheer grace, a present. Except, at some point we will be called on to return it. No matter how much we celebrate the life of a dead person, that person is still dead. No matter how much we implore him or her to rest in power, the fact is we hold no power in our hands to change the stark reality of a world tinged with death.

Hulk Hogan was a figure whose public persona was larger than life. But in the nakedness of his soul before God, he is Terry Bollea, a frail human being adrift in a cavernous universe that neither he nor any of the rest of us created. Every brother and sister of ours on this planet, from the mightiest to the tiniest, is in that same metaphysical boat. We ought not to rest in the power we think we derive from stage acts, or social movements, or political struggles, however worthwhile. We ought to rest in the power of the God who made us, the only power that will outlast this passing world that we inhabit for but a blink in eternity.