James David Jordan Something That Lasts

Something That Lasts

James David Jordan

Integrity, May 2006, $13.99

ISBN: 159145428X

The Post-Dispatch named Reverend David Parst one of the fifty most influential leaders in the St. Louis area. David has a loving wife Sarah and a delightful twelve year old son Jack. His flock at the O'Fallon Bible Church thinks the world of him. He has everything going perfectly.

At church on Sunday David asks his congregation whether there is anything anyone had to say; a minor gesture that always resulted in accolades or silence. Not this time. Ted Balik rises and claims that David is having an affair with his wife Erika before walking out of the edifice to shoot himself. David is stunned as his wife demands he leave, his son is devastated, and the congregation fires him. Seeking redemption, David becomes pastor to a small church in Elsa, Texas.

A decade later David still needs forgiveness from his family and the Lord, but has no hopes as he keeps track of them albeit from a distance like serendipitously watching Jack play college baseball. Jack has become a corporate lawyer who abuses his wife Katie; she flees with their daughter Lynn to live with Sarah.

Though a deep Christian character study that looks closely at the impact of a major sin, the protagonist could have starred any person, regardless of religion, abusing their position of power that includes trust in the individual. Thus James David Jordan makes a strong case that a transgression involving trust can prove to be SOMETHING THAT LASTS for a lifetime (and more) as the sins of the father reappear in the offspring. Repenting and even redemption does not always erase the sin as life is not an etch a sketch; this is superior morality fiction as the key players involved with the scandal seem genuine at the time of the adultery and years later.

Harriet Klausner