I recently had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Josh Yoder, junior ecology and Literalism double major, and have a chat about ecology. I had some misunderstandings about the environment that he was happy to set me straight on. Please enjoy!

Q: Could you define ecology for me in seven words?

A: Ecology is, in exactly seven words, “the birds and the bees and you.” But let me also emphasize at this point of time that ecology absolutely must be constrained, or reined in, if you will, to the truth of scripture as well.

Q: In comparison to the boogieman, Goshen College’s Student Senate and the moon landing, how much of a hoax is global warming?

A: If you want my honest opinion, those are all pretty ridiculous hoaxes and are perpetrated on all of us GC students by the liberal media machine right here in our own Communication and Marketing Department.

I mean, they just spew this stuff out. You go to their Facebook page and they’re trying to tell you that we need to be letting weeds grow all over campus to fight global warming.

Answer me this: how is lighting all those weeds on FIRE making things any cooler? The only warming happening around here is the hot air coming out of the mouths of those who fail to remember that ALL SCIENCE IS BIAS.

Q: On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you agree with the statement “plants and animals should be given just as many, if not more rights than humans?”

A: Straight up 6. No question. If I’ve learned anything in my Bible and Ethics courses here at good ol’ GC, it’s that God’s plan for the world has never, cannot and will never include a need for our favorite animals, trees or creatures to be killed. If we are for God’s vision of true peace, we must continue to witness to the fact that all of God’s creatures are endowed with certain inalienable rights, namely the right not to get eaten.

This may make you unpopular, but when you go to the next Waterford or BAMF potluck and you see that meatloaf, God wants you to make a scene and let his people know that they are risking the fires of hell for eating our covenant partners, the animals. This is the kind of prophetic witness we need to carry out.

Q: You told me at dinner the other day that the second law of ecology states that “there is no waste or ‘away’ in nature.” Does that mean I should keep burning my trash so that it doesn’t end up in nature?

A: That’s exactly the point. Sounds like you’ve already had some ecological training.

But there’s also another way, a sort of intersection between the biblical narrative and current ecological problems that can inform us towards better ways of managing things we can’t use anymore. If you remember the story in Exodus 2, where the Levite woman couldn’t hide the baby Moses any longer, she just put him in a basket and sent him down the river.

Q: Hmmm … Now, one last question. Does Ryan Sensenig actually think science and religion are compatible?

A: Don’t even get me started on Ryan! I give him credit for trying to be interdisciplinary, but sometimes I think he just forgets that all science is “vanity and a chasing after the wind,” to quote Ecclesiastes. In the end, the Bible must come first. I’m attending a Christian college, and I expect to be taught Christian principles.