DRINKIN' WITH DEITIES

I was chatting with my god the other night and he said, “Geoff, you shall drink red and white wine, and beer, and gin martinis ...”  He didn’t do any of that “thee” and “thou” stuff, for which I was grateful.  “And you shall on occasion drink a vodka and tonic or a Manhattan.  But you shall not drink Malibu or Bailey’s Irish Cream, for they are an abomination.”

         And you know the amazing thing was, that’s EXACTLY what I’d been thinking myself.

I now read that the god of the northern Nigerians has decided that 240,000 bottles of beer needed to be destroyed in order to curtail immoral behavior in the area, perhaps of the sort seen above and below. 

God of course worked through a police force who smashed the bottles while yelling,  "Allahu Ahkbar." I’d have thought that yelling “God moves in mysterious ways” would have been just as appropriate.

The attitude of the Jewish god toward alcohol is mixed as far as I can tell.  A little wine here is good, too much wine there is bad; which is pretty much what my god thinks too.  The Jewish scriptures are silent on matters of the Martini and the Moscow Mule, as far as I know.  But I did just find this classic ad:

The essence of Jaffa orange with just a hint of fine chocolate, indeed.  Sabra Liqueur is still being made, I discover, and the bottle is based on the design of a 2,000-year-old Phoenician wine flask found in a Tel Aviv museum.

         Leviticus does tell us, “Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die;” which is pretty definitive.  Sabra Liqueur may look all soft and smoochy, but it’s 27% alcohol by volume, so perhaps best avoided on tabernacle night.  That’ll make god happy, which is the whole point, right?