2012-02-17
Explanation
This comic imagines a conversation between Jesus and God (represented as a large golden oval) after Jesus's time on Earth. God asks how it went, and Jesus brings up his famous water-into-wine miracle. He then nervously mentions that some ethnic groups lack the alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes needed to efficiently metabolize alcohol. God's response -- "They... oh crap" -- suggests they realize this oversight may have been a problem.
The final panel shows a professor at a lectern stating, "It's not entirely clear why Christianity never blossomed in Asia." The joke connects the well-documented genetic variation in alcohol metabolism (certain East Asian populations more commonly carry variants of the ALDH2 gene that cause unpleasant reactions to alcohol) with the historical observation that Christianity did not become the dominant religion in much of Asia. The comic humorously implies that basing a central sacrament around wine consumption was a strategic miscalculation for populations genetically predisposed to alcohol intolerance.