Interviewing a Former Atheist

Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.

Here's your host, Pastor.

Keith Foskey. Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. On today's program I'm going to be talking with my friend, Rich Suplita, whose ministry I've been encouraged by for quite some time.

I met him on Facebook and I've been watching him for a long time on his Facebook page and Rich has not only a Facebook page but also a website, AskAFormerAtheist .com and he does ministry directly with students on college campuses.

He engages with them directly, he answers their questions about the faith, and again watching him has been an encouragement to me because over the years I've sort of adopted some of his methodologies when we go out and share the faith at our fishing hole, which for those of you who are members of Sovereign Grace Family Church, you'll know that's what we call our outreach ministry.

That's our fishing hole. So I want to welcome you to the show today, Rich. Hello. Hey Keith, appreciate the opportunity to come on and share some thoughts and ideas with your listeners. Well thank you again for coming on the program and I want to begin by asking you to, if you would, share with the audience a little bit about yourself because you have such a unique testimony and I was again to remind myself today reading through a little bit of your bio on your website and I like what you said about with your wife we're thinking about writing a book about how not to spend the first half of your life and so if you could just for the next few minutes just sort of introduce yourself to the audience and tell them a little bit about about who you are.

From Church of Christ Roots to Practical Atheism

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll try I'll try to be brief but I I grew up in West Virginia, the north-central part of West Virginia, and I grew up in a Church of Christ movement and going three times a week to that and that was a big part of my background all the way up through my teenage years and I would say even into my early 20s.

I was sort of a non-traditional student when I went to college. Right out of high school I worked construction for a few years as an electrician apprentice and I was in the Marine Corps Reserves and then when I finished that I I think I was 22 or 23 when I really started into the University, into college, and basically to summarize that I I went through a phase the first couple would say my Bible based beliefs that I had up into that point grew weaker and weaker.

My affinity for the world and for certain categories of sin became stronger and stronger and by the time I was... I understand that. And by the time I was finishing up my undergraduate degrees I don't think I would have called myself an atheist by I probably would have shrunk away from that designation but I certainly was living as a practical atheist by that point.

Got married in 1999 and moved to Georgia. That's interesting. I was married in 1999 as well. What month? September, right. Okay so we were born we were August 1st so we were one month ahead of you. Yeah so September of 99 and so this is my my now ex-wife.

I'll get to that in a second but we were married for nine years. She did her medical residency in Savannah. I a year after we moved to Savannah started a graduate a PhD program at the University of Georgia and it was called biopsychology when I came in biological psychology but then they changed the name to neuroscience and behavior and so that's where I spent five and a half years earning my master's and then ultimately my doctorate and I would say that's where the real deep indoctrination into very anti-theistic viewpoints set in.

So I had not only the the heart that you know as we would say biblically love to sin even though I didn't recognize that at the time as such but looking back literally heart of sin heart that loves sin and then being trained in ideas that are fundamentally opposed to the truth of the gospel and so you know I mentioned the divorce.

So I was married for nine years. We got divorced in 2008 and that's kind of you know not coincidentally corresponded to the the height of my atheism and I think there's a lot going on there but a lot of pain of a failed marriage.

My wife divorced me. We tried to work things out but it was you know went through as a no-fault divorce whatever that means. Yeah. Right and so you know that obviously a lot of heartbreaks. I have three daughters not being a part of their daily lives and I think you know it was sort of the classic scenario of God does not exist and I hate him.

That is the truth that yeah absolutely absolutely. I remember a guy I don't mean to interrupt you but there was a guy I listened to he was out on a college campus and he asked the questions no I'm sorry he was in an atheist event and he asked the question he said if it could be proven that God did exist would you worship him and almost every one of them said no even if we knew God exists we would not worship him.

Yeah and I think that's true biblically that's true my understanding of any human being and none of us would unless God enabled that to happen so that is very true and so that's that's where I was and I think it's a big part of I guess coping sort of a reorienting my life.

I'm single again. I'm a scientist you know I really latched on to that what was called the new atheist movement characterized by figures such as Richard Dawkins. Christopher Hitchens yeah. Right yeah Sam Harris stand-in and some of those guys and became an aficionado for lack of a better term of a internet broadcast out of Austin Texas called the Atheist Experience and their main talking head was a guy who was a former Southern Baptist named Matt Dillahunty.

I'm familiar with Matt he debated Saitam Burgundy. Yep right right yeah so I spent a lot of time watching that program and in getting the idea of hey you know Athens Georgia needs something like this and made some efforts to make something like that happen it never really materialized and then so you know my sojourn into militant atheism was about a three-year journey before I hit the wall and realized this isn't gonna work out and God started turning all of that around.

Do you remember what it was that really showed you and I know it wasn't one thing but I want to share with you something real quick when I was 19 years old as I got I got married and I got saved in the same year because I met an atheist for the first time and he challenged me on what I had been brought up to believe and I spent several weeks of pure misery because I thought maybe he was right maybe there wasn't a God maybe it wasn't true and it was it was the closest I ever came to being an atheist so for several weeks I threw my Bible across the room because I thought it was the craziest yeah I went back and read the the creation and the flood and the talking bush and all these things and I literally I remember getting to the burning bush and throwing my Bible across the room saying this can't be true this is this is the most this is the most radical thing in the world to believe and it was that moment that God used to really begin working on my heart because it was the first time I'd ever been broken and so I telling you that part of my testimony do you remember a specific moment in when when you were in this militant atheism where you would say this was the moment where I realized I'd gone too far.

The Turning Point Through a Daughter's Baptism

Well yeah a few different moments you know actually stick out in my head and I would say probably the biggest one the single biggest one involved my oldest daughter Annabelle who is now 19 she's a she's a freshman here at UGA but at the time I guess you know we're talking 11 or 12 years ago something along those lines at least a decade so I say I'll say 11 years ago her mom my ex-wife at the time had still been taking her to church kind of like her the way she dealt with the divorce was kind of like re-establishing community joined a local church a just a just a typical SBC Church outside of Athens and I think it was either Sunday school or VBS Annabelle had made a profession of faith in in Jesus and so I get a text this is while by the way I'm like the acting faculty advisor of the Atheist Club at UGA I get a text that Annabelle is going to be baptized on such-and-such a date and you know can I attend.

And my first inclination was to say no of course not you know but then actually through talking to some of my atheist and secularist friends it was like well the consensus seemed to be you know be a good father show up take the pictures smile you know you can talk with her about these things later but be a good dad right.

So don't you know try to fight this. So I did that and my girlfriend at the time was a a secularist Jewish girl so she was a basic basically an atheist and so I said you want next time we hang out with Annabelle we'll go get ice cream with her we'll sit down and we'll say okay so here's this thing that happened at church you know you were baptized this is what that's supposed to mean but in in kind of a patronizing way this is so common these days so you know and it's fine if you if you want to believe in some type of religion that's that's fine if that works for you if that helps get you through the day that's good people need something to believe in but come on you know there's not like really some guy up in the sky that's ready to zap you with lightning bolts if you step out of line.

And so this was the conversation that was supposed to take place and all I can just to make a long story short we sat down with her to have that conversation and I literally could not get the words out of my mouth.

I couldn't even begin that conversation. Hmm I don't think like I was God sent angels to mute me or anything like that. But it was just like I couldn't I couldn't express that to her. And you know in psychology we have a theory called cognitive dissonance.

Maybe you've heard of it before. But the idea of dissonance is like right if I if I believe in something I'm a big part of my identity is a belief system at that time it was atheism for me so much of my identity was bound up in that I was advocating that espousing atheism trying to convince other people to become atheists on campus.

And my daughter had professed faith in Christ and was baptized. And not only was I not able to contradict that in her life on any level I realized that actually it was giving me joy. I was I was I celebrated in my heart I was.

It brought me real joy in my heart of hearts to know that the person I love more than anyone else on the planet had made this quote decision for Christ. And that's major cognitive dissonance. Right. Yeah absolutely I do this.

I don't want her following a lie all her life. So do I really believe that Christianity is the lie. Maybe I don't. Wow that's that's powerful thought that is that's awesome. Well good that's that man that.

And okay so the how long after that would you say. If you were you may not remember specifically. But how long after that would you did you begin to did the holes in the dike begin to display themselves with atheism.

I would say pretty quickly within a matter of maybe six months at the most you know I just kind of pushed it to the back burner at first. And then I remember very distinctly the the winter break Chris we used to call it Christmas break.

Right. They've trained us all to be PC now. Yeah absolutely regrettably I just said that no I'm with you. Yeah I understand the break between semesters of the 2010 2011 I just remember really going back and and I was still in some of my my atheist routines watching the atheist experience.

But I was watching it with a new desire a new bias will say right a different perspective. I wasn't just kind of like to jump on this bandwagon. That's not my intention now but I want to really think maybe the right maybe the wrong.

And I started noticing some major just some huge flaws in their reasoning some some major inconsistencies or I would say philosophical failures with the atheistic philosophy. I know we're not time for a bunch of I'll just give you example one place.

Yeah. But the one that really comes to mind since you know my background was in neuroscience cognitive sciences. If materialism atheism is true then there is no such thing as as choice. We are automatons we are robots.

And I don't notice I'm not using the word free will because that gets us into a whole different conversation. But I think pretty much all Christians would agree that humans make meaningful choices we make.

Yeah. Absolutely. In fact I I've had this conversation with people who are non-believers. And I say if what you say is true if I'm if I'm essentially stardust and all of my thoughts and feelings and emotions are simply the expressions of my mind's chemical reactions then I'm not in control of that.

I'm not a free thinker. I'm the I'm the product of whatever my mind has grown to be right. Yeah. And so it's not free thought. It's not free thinking. It's it's byproduct. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That's exactly where I was going with that.

Because you know the atheists we when I was part of that movement we would pride ourselves we're the free thinkers. That was like our favorite designation for ourselves. They had proposed the Brights for a while.

How condescending is that. You know we're the Brights. But they're like okay. No we're the free. Exactly what you said. If if the ultimate reality from beginning to end is stuff some type of stuff stardust whatever you want call it some iteration of physical matter and energy that obeys fixed physical laws there's no wiggle room for any type of choice any type of volition in there whatsoever stuff just does whatever stuff has to do because of physical necessity.

And and I realized that. Okay. Well even if that were true which takes an enormous amount of faith to believe that nobody lives like that's true. If your worldview requires you to believe something's true.

But in terms of how you live your life at every turn you've got to contradict that. I would argue that worldview is not a very good worldview. Amen. Absolutely absolutely. So you said that was back in 2011.

So you've been in. So you've been in ministry. Or it was after how long after that did you decide I got a change in going to ministry. Yeah so okay so I'm trying to be concise. I know and I know people can go read this.

I just hearing you tell your story I could listen all day but but go ahead. I I knew. Okay so coming into that spring semester of 2011 I knew for sure that I was leaving atheism. I knew that. Okay I didn't take this real far at the time and it was it was a long in fact in terms of like am I going to go back to Bible believing Christianity kind of along the lines of what I grew up with in some way the answer I would have had at the time is absolutely not.

I have no intentions of going back to that. But hey I really do believe there's a God. I believe there's a God. It's a personal God. I was very you know we're to a certain extent we're a product of our cultures.

Nobody would deny that. That has an enormous impact on on how we think. So sure. So I you know it's real easy in America to buy into the God of love. Right. I mean and we would say God is a God of love.

We got to balance that against all of his other attributes. But just jump on board. I'm going to join some church that just you know appreciates God worships God as a God of love and nothing else and just kind of embraces everyone.

That was really where I thought I would go with it going into like spring and summer of 2011 sort of a you know a therapeutic type of loose low obligation low commitment Christianity. I understand. Yeah.

The Gospel of John and Jesus Raising Lazarus

What was. When did you finally join a church. Okay. Yes. So I don't I didn't become a member but I was I was intercepted late that semester. It was on Good Friday of 2011 by an outreach. It was their first ever event at UGA a big Southern Baptist Church just south of Athens called Watkinsville First Baptist was having a an outreach event called the Great Exchange and it's a survey based.

Have you heard. Maybe you've heard something about that. I don't think I've ever heard of it but it did. The students were giving out surveys or yeah it's just like a it's a nine question survey. That's the idea you know you have a little piece of paper.

I've actually helped them with subsequent events since then. Like first question is describe your spiritual background. What was that like. And as you work your way down through the list there's a question who who was.

Who do you believe Jesus was. Who is Jesus in your opinion if you could know God personally would you like to stuff like that. And so I stopped and I took the survey and ended up in about a two-hour discussion with one of their assistant pastors who's now the the the lead pastor or whatever you want to call it senior pastor for lack of a better term at my home church Living Hope Church.

Wow David Holt. And I kind of explained to him the journey I'd been on and and kind of where I was. We started meeting at Starbucks for the next three or four weeks just having coffee which is a great way to do evangelism.

I mean yeah praise the Lord. Yeah just meet with them get to know their story where they're coming from what their questions are and the Lord really used that. What I would say is the next really big step was when when David he invited me he's like well do you still have a Bible.

And I knew I had one. It was my old NIV study Bible that I had as a teenager in Church Christ and I knew exactly where it was in my apartment. I never read it but I knew where it was. And he's like I said yeah and he said well would you agree to do this between now.

And you know we'll meet again like next Friday at 3 p .m. or whatever it was between now and then would you agree to just sit down take a couple hours sit down by yourself and read through the Gospel of John.

And because I told him I said you know I do believe in God. Now I think Jesus was not just a man. I I think that he probably there's a good chance he rose from the dead but I don't know I can't be sure I told him I still believe in evolution which I don't now by the way different topic.

Sure yeah I always believe that because hey I'm a scientist and this is what scientists believe and I have a real problem with the doctrine of hell. He said yeah but what if I want to focus on this fascination with the person of Jesus I really think is from the Holy Spirit.

And he's like I would just be fascinated to see what the Holy Spirit would do with the time if you sat down one sitting just read through the Gospel of John and just prayed before you begin God if this really is your word and what this is telling me about Jesus is true then help me understand that in a way that I cannot deny and so so I did that and made it.

You know here's what I thought at the time Keith I thought well I already know what the Gospel of John says. I had to memorize Bible verses as a kid. Right. Absolutely my logic and reason and stuff like that has brought me to this point.

But just reading the Gospel of John's not kind of like I didn't say this to David but I'm thinking this to myself it's not gonna get me past this 50 -50 mark but you know I went ahead and did it and the story sounded very familiar.

For whatever reason I still don't know the Holy Spirit decided to use John 11 Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. And specifically that interaction he has with Martha where you know she says you know Lord if you had been here my brother wouldn't have died.

She says you're he's gonna rise again. And she says yeah I know on the last day when everyone is raised he'll rise and Jesus is like no that's it's not what I'm talking about. He says I am the resurrection in the life.

And just a little light bulb right comes on. Jesus is not talking about what he has the power to do. He's talking about his identity. He didn't say I can raise the dead and I can give life. He says I am the resurrection in the life.

And then at the end of that statement he he turns to Martha and he says do you believe this. And I just knew in my heart that that that Christ was asking me the same question and I knew in my heart that my answer was not 50 -50 that it was a hundred percent yes at that point so that is just stopping right there for a minute that that that is enough to give you chills just that's it that that's that's awesome.

And I know when folks hear that that's gonna that's gonna resonate with a lot of folks. Yeah it's awesome. So continue. I'm sorry. Oh yeah so I will say this I don't want to pay any. You know it'd been great if that was the moment I was baptized the next day and just the sanctification work just kicked in and you know I was basically Billy Graham six months later.

That's not how it worked. That's not what I and honestly just just to summarize because I do want to make it clear to people I spent about and I really wanted to follow Christ. This led to a genuine decision in my heart to hey this is I understand my life needs to be about this because I do think it's true but then just a lot of compromised lukewarm Christianity trying to do one foot in the world one foot in the church for which doesn't work for two two and a half years to until God brought me to a point of genuine and complete surrender.

And when you surrendered to the ministry or when you surrendered to him that was that the lead into ministry. Or was that you you knew that was where he was taking you. Yeah in pretty in pretty quick order.

I think I knew for sure by spring of 2015 that that the Lord was leading me to be on campuses and to defend present the gospel and to defend the gospel. I consider myself more of an evangelist than an apologist.

But I really see the the two us as married together. Sure things I love about our ministry with Rashi Rashi O 'Christy it's like the Latin word ratio and then Christie just Christ with an eye at the end reason for Christ which is a just a great apologetics organization on campuses because Rashi O 'Christy doesn't just it's not just like let's sit around in a circle and read CS Lewis and talk about what we think he meant.

You know some apologetics groups are like that and maybe there's a role for that but it really is a you know let's talk about apologetics but let's also find ways to take truth out there outside of these walls and interact with the students are our peers our co-workers so on and so forth.

Campus Evangelism and Apologetics Methods

Awesome awesome. Your first time going on to campus to do that you happen to remember that that event and how it went and how you felt. Well I joined the first time I went out to do public evangelism on campus.

Well okay I was with a very seasoned campus preacher who had done a ton of this stuff for the last three or four decades. A guy he's a very close dear brother of Christ lives in Columbus Ohio named Tom short and Tom has been on easily over a hundred campuses thousands of times preaching the gospel and engaging in kind of like street-level apologetics practical apologetics.

And yeah it was it was a it was tense you know I felt like I had a target on my back. I remember that same sense when I first went on the street corner with Bobby McCreary and Alex Burton some of these guys to preach the gospel in downtown Athens just felt like the I just felt very vulnerable.

Right. Like that like that's the field mouse that's suddenly finds itself out in the middle of the field when there's Hawks circling above. I understand and and did any of the old guard any of your old atheist people give you a hard time.

I don't remember a whole lot of that. Interestingly enough. So certainly I had it was I was doing outreach in Athens when some of my former students were still around which was very strange. I think I did have a couple of people who were formerly formerly knew me primarily through the atheist club who came to have conversations with me but interestingly and I think I can at least think of two maybe there was three and none of those interactions was anybody hostile.

It's like they were just like genuinely curious and one of the two actually had quit being an atheist himself although he certainly wasn't following Christ. And we just sat down and talked for a couple hours.

That's awesome. And that's that's what I was gonna say. Such a such a massive change to see in someone and I know it was over a period of years. It wasn't like you went in a week you know you mentioned 2011 to 2015 but still such a massive change to see in someone's life is certainly going to be something that people can't just can't just turn their nose up at.

They got to be they have to notice. That's that's a real something real has happened here right. Well I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I appreciate you sharing your story with us. I'm looking forward to to our people on our listeners getting to know you better and even members of our church who listen this program.

I want people to get on your website. I want them to watch the video of your interview and do a few and learn. I think that you have a lot to a lot that you can say to folks and but I want to ask a few questions.

I know I told you I was gonna ask you a few things just to sort of just a few things to maybe help some folks out that are that are listening. The first is if you knew someone wanted to do an on-campus ministry.

If they said you know my heart is to reach college students and I just don't know what to do. Do I just go standing on a corner and hand out tracks. What advice would you give. Yeah that's a great question.

I would say just get out a notebook and write down some different ideas is not a bad place to begin. You mentioned like standing on a corner and taking some good tracks with you. Certainly that's a viable option.

Some other ones you know I do believe that the Lord has is calling more men to to preach open air than who actually do it. So you know again you got to take that before the Lord. Maybe that's a possibility.

If that's something a person wants to do I would say certainly there needs to be some conversations with their church leadership their elders praying over that asking the Lord to make it really clear.

One of the main methods I don't know if you alluded to it yet or not but is using a dry erase board. That's an approach where you can just take a dry erase board put a question on it. Who is Jesus. Who is.

And sometimes we'll have like categories where they can vote who is Jesus of Nazareth Lord liar lunatic kind of the old C .S. Lewis trilemma and people walk by just hand out you know offer them the marker and say hey we're just doing kind of an informal survey here.

Can you mind weighing in on this and whatever they put you know if they put Lord say okay so I see you. You would you say that you believe Jesus of Nazareth is Lord. You take a couple minutes and just explain to me what you mean by that.

How did you come to that conclusion. Right. That's a great method. I I can. So I think you just got to kind of say well what are some different possibilities. Is there a group on campus. Is there like a ratio Christi on campus if if you're around a campus if a person's a student they're great organizations to get involved with because they are deliberate about taking the gospel out there and I would say so those are some good ideas but also not that you have to go with someone else but I would say if you can there's a reason why Jesus sent out the disciples in groups of two.

I think it always helps to take someone else with you for spiritual but also just for practical reasons. It people you know it's no secret that the campuses and just the public in general is trending towards a more hostile stance it with regard to the gospel and people can and will make false accusation against you.

So having another witness there who says no they didn't call this person that they you know whatever is is a good idea. Amen. And what you said earlier about the person you went with first was a seasoned open-air preacher.

He was a seasoned minister on campus that that was huge. That was helpful for me because honestly this this is this is you know I've been open-air preaching before but we have a minute a man in our church who is a much seasoned much more seasoned open-air preacher than me.

He's one of my fellow elders so when we go he takes the lead even though I'm the pastor he's he's he's a he. I'm following him because that's his he's been he's he's been spit on people have thrown things at him he's been in situations where he's had to endure things that I never have and so be you know when I go with him he's he's he's the man you know and I'm learning from him.

Yeah absolutely. I think that's a great you know like and most of the open-air preachers I know pretty much all of them if you said hey do you mind if I tag along with you they they're probably not. I think it's probably not wise to invite a person to preach until you kind of get a good solid understanding of how well do they know the gospel.

Can they present it in a in a reasonable way what is their demeanor likely to be like out there. So going alongside a person who is seasoned in preaching and just handing out tracts and talking to people and in praying with the preacher and for the preacher those are all good ways to kind of get your feet wet.

Weaknesses in Reaching College Students

Awesome awesome. This next question really is is I want to be clear I'm not asking to down any type of ministry or church but where do you think are some of the weaknesses in churches in reaching young people in college students.

And I would say like for me right away you know I I know where our weaknesses as a church are. And if somebody said hey this is a weakness and we shared it I wouldn't be offended and I hope we wouldn't offend anybody by saying these are areas where the church is weak.

And what do you think are some of the greatest weaknesses. Yeah okay that's a great question. I mean that could be like a whole series right. Yeah another show. Yeah yeah yeah yeah I would I just want to reiterate you know just first of all before I say anything you know praise the Lord for the church thank God brothers and sisters and people who stand for truth who love the Lord.

But we yeah we want to be open to critique and I would say as far as what I see on campuses it probably the biggest weakness is people have bought too much into what you might call friendship friendship evangelism or that you know what what is attributed very often to Francis of Assisi.

Right. You've heard it whether he said it or not you know preach the gospel at all times when necessary use words which he probably didn't say yeah but you know the gospel is an explicit message. It's it's a propositional truth and it has to be expressed that way.

It's great to hand out bottles of water to people who need them. I see people doing this sort of thing as outreaches a cup of hot chocolate cookies and I don't have a problem. I don't think those are wrong per se but we don't want to confuse those with actually doing evangelism.

That's being nice to people. Being nice to people might get your foot in the door but it's not actually preaching the gospel to people and so I'd say that's probably the single biggest they what people want to go out and be nice to people.

Hopefully if you give them enough cookies and enough hot chocolate we'll start asking you about Jesus. That's probably not going to happen. Yeah yeah that it's amazing you know because you and I we know each other through Facebook but we don't know each other very well but we're it's amazing how how linked our minds are on things like that.

Because that's that's exactly what you know one of the things I was thinking was and of course Tony Miano I know you know Tony through through you know him personally or have you have you met him. We crossed paths in person a couple times but mostly just through yeah Facebook and such years ago he put out a thing about friendship friendship evangelism that was very helpful to me and it's actually kind of convicted me because I recently moved to a new neighborhood and he and he asked the question he says when you move to a new neighborhood do you do you go and invite your do you go and share your faith with your neighbors.

Or you do you go and make friends and hope that over the years you can build up enough energy or you know personal capital to share that your faith with them. And so my wife and I have been trying to think through how do we want to share our faith with our new neighbors without it having to take years of building up a friendship and it's a little easier for me as a pastor because it's like when you introduce yourself hi I'm a pastor.

Yeah it's it's a little easier just because I have that I can automatically start you know and people oh you're a pastor what church. And it automatically opens a door for spiritual things. But anyway I didn't mean to went off the subject there for a minute but yeah friendship evangelism is certainly you know you wait years and years for the opportunity and then you don't take the opportunity because you're afraid you're gonna lose a friend.

Yeah and you know I don't know if you follow like the Barna polls and stuff like that that come out but the most recent one you know they asked I think millennial and then we're into Gen Z now Gen Z evangelical Christians so I'm not sure exactly what their definition was but usually that's a person who says they're born again they believe the Bible's work God so on and so forth.