Review of "The Ominous Struggle: Is It Really Beautiful?" by George Beasley

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

The Ominous Struggle by George Beasley is one of those rare Christian books that actually feels like it was written in the middle of the storm, not years later from a safe distance. It hurts. It comforts. It wrestles. And it keeps coming back to the same stubborn claim: struggle is universal and often devastating, but it can also be transformed into something meaningful when it is carried with faith, honesty, and real support.

Readers who already know George Beasley from his multi time OCA winning memoir The Invisible Soul will recognize the heart here. What surprised us is how much more refined and structured this book feels. If The Invisible Soul excelled on raw power and inspiration, The Ominous Struggle feels like the next step. It is better organized, more clearly argued, and more intentionally educational while still drawing deeply from the author’s personal pain.

The book is built around twelve carefully crafted chapters that move through different dimensions of struggle. Early on, Beasley defines what he means by “the struggle,” breaking it into three major layers: societal, personal, and existential. That alone already gives readers a useful framework.

Societal struggle shows up in things like social media comparison, economic pressure, and the constant push to look successful and happy.

Personal struggle covers wounds from childhood, trauma, loss, addiction, and the shadow battles people fight behind closed doors.

Existential struggle asks the big questions. Why am I here? Does any of this matter? Where is God when everything falls apart?

From there, the book moves through topics like faith and perseverance, the role of religious institutions, judgment and shame, materialism, transparency, the mask of happiness, the presence of evil, and finally hope. It has the feel of a well thought out series of sermons, but with far more personal vulnerability than most pulpit messages ever risk.

What impressed us is that the book stays distinctly personal despite that structured, didactic approach. This is not just theory. Beasley repeatedly pulls back the curtain on his own story.

One of the most memorable threads is the story of George’s brother, Chris. Chris wrestles with addiction, searches for God, and finds a church that actually welcomes him. He starts attending faithfully, even while still fragile. The same congregation that walked with him during rehab continues to show up through relapses, setbacks, and finally his death at only thirty seven years old.

The pier scenes are especially powerful. We see the brothers as younger men, standing by the water, talking about hopes and dreams. Years later, George returns alone to that same pier and stands where his brother once stood. The silence, the echoes, and the ache in that moment say almost as much as the words on the page. It is not just a nostalgic memory. It is a raw confrontation with grief, mortality, and the way loss reshapes a person’s faith.

Yet even here, the book insists that light can break through. Chris’s search for God and for Christian community did not just change his own path, it became the doorway through which George was drawn into church too. What began as Chris’s personal journey toward faith becomes a turning point for the entire family. The message is clear: even in loss, even in messy, unfinished stories, grace and purpose can emerge.

Another standout section describes the author’s own descent into what feels like a pit of depression. He uses a striking image of waking in a narrow vertical shaft of mud, light a tiny circle overhead, unable to climb out. That is where a persistent helper appears, checking in, calling, urging him to hold on. The point is not that one conversation magically cures anything. The point is that someone is willing to sit on the edge of the pit and keep lowering down hope, hour after hour and day after day. It is one of the most honest depictions of depression and support we have seen in a faith based book.

The church and illness story also lingers. Beasley tells of a woman with stage 4 cancer who stops treatment after someone prays over her and declares her healed. The cancer returns. She dies. It is a sobering caution about confusing faith with denial and about how dangerous it can be when religious exuberance tries to override medical wisdom. The book handles this with nuance. He never trashes prayer or miracles. Instead, he argues that faith and medicine are meant to walk together, not compete.

Scattered throughout are portraits of people like Keith, a man who faced significant hardship but somehow refused to live in bitterness. In speaking of Keith, Beasley notes that “Despite the hardships he faced, he never spoke negatively about his past or his circumstances. Instead, he focused on the present and the future, encouraging others to learn, love, and live fully.” Moments like that keep the book grounded in real faces, not just concepts.

One of the strongest threads in The Ominous Struggle is its insistence that people in pain do not primarily need advice. They need presence.

Beasley hammers this home with a few simple, memorable lines. “In times of crisis, people often need to feel heard and understood more than anything else.” And, “Time is one of the most valuable things we can offer someone who is struggling, and it can make a world of difference.”

Those are deceptively simple sentences. In context, they turn into a quiet manifesto. True support is not drive by encouragement or quick spiritual slogans. It is the decision to sit with someone while they cry, to keep texting back, to take their calls when they are not at their best, and to refuse to judge or blame them for their pain.

The book also spends a lot of time on authenticity. Many people, including Christians, walk around in what he calls a “mask of happiness,” smiling on the outside while falling apart inside. Social media only amplifies this. Everyone posts the highlight reel. No one posts the nights they cannot sleep or the mornings they cannot get out of bed. Beasley keeps returning to this plea: drop the mask. Admit the hurt. Talk about it. Ask for help before it eats you alive from the inside.

On that note, he is very clear that negative feelings are normal. Anger, sadness, fear, jealousy, doubt. These are part of being human, not proof that you have failed as a believer. The challenge is not to never feel them. The challenge is to bring them into conversation with God and with safe people rather than letting them fester in silence.

The book does not dodge the question of evil. Instead, it leans into it. Beasley talks frankly about abuse he has experienced, about cosmic battles like the crucifixion of Christ, and about the reality that evil is woven into the human story in ways that are often baffling.

He writes, “The truth is, that evil serves a purpose, even when we do not fully understand it. It challenges us, tests us, and ultimately leads us back to God. Whether through personal experiences, like the abuse I endured, or larger cosmic battles like the crucifixion of Christ, evil is part of the human experience. But it is not without hope. For in every struggle, there is the possibility of redemption, healing, and growth.”

That is not the kind of sentence you toss off lightly. To his credit, Beasley does not offer this as a glib answer. He repeatedly invites readers to reflect. As he puts it, “As we examine the role of evil in our lives, I encourage you to reflect on your own encounters with darkness. How have they shaped you. And how might you, too, find grace in the midst of the struggle.”

Readers who are in the middle of those questions may not agree with every theological conclusion, but they will at least feel that the author has lived them, not just studied them.


Visually, this is a more polished and intentional project than The Invisible Soul. The layout is clean and the images are genuinely helpful additions.

You get evocative illustrations and graphics that match the text rather than fighting with it. For example, scenes that depict social media towers overshadowing a lone figure, cracked earth around Job, a divided church panel that contrasts light and darkness, and a solitary figure walking past someone collapsed on the tracks. These are not just decorative. They reinforce the emotional and spiritual points the text is making and give visual thinkers another way into the material.

Scripturally, the book is rich. Beasley constantly grounds his reflections in Bible passages from both Old and New Testaments. Job, Joseph, Paul, the Psalms, Romans, Ephesians, Matthew, and Hebrews show up again and again. The closing meditation on hope is especially anchored in Hebrews 6:19. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” That verse becomes a kind of banner over the whole project.

If we have critiques, they are minor and mostly about craft. Some ideas reappear several times in slightly different wording, which can give certain sections a repetitive feel. A few passages read a bit like sermon notes sent straight to print, with phrases that could have been tightened or rephrased for smoother reading. Readers who prefer very lean, minimalist prose may occasionally wish an editor had trimmed a paragraph here or there.

There is also an interesting tension around mental health. In the dedication sections, there is language that suggests the mental health crisis may “never get better but only be manageable.” For some readers, that line will feel blunt and realistic, a recognition that many conditions are chronic and require ongoing care. For others, it may sound more fatalistic than they are comfortable with. Fortunately, the stories and the overall arc of the book lean much more toward resilient hope. They show therapy, medicine, church, friendship, and prayer all working together to make life not just survivable but meaningful.

None of this undercuts the overall impact. It simply marks this as a very earnest, sometimes slightly unpolished book written by someone who clearly cares more about telling the truth than about perfect phrasing.

Ultimately, The Ominous Struggle is a book about hope. Not fluffy, “everything is fine” hope, but gritty, lived in hope that has walked through addiction, abuse, depression, grief, church hurt, and long stretches of silence, and still chooses to believe that God is present and that community matters.

Beasley invites us to listen more and judge less. To offer time instead of quick fixes. To drop the mask of happiness when we are dying inside. To accept that evil and suffering are part of the story, but not the end of the story. Most of all, he invites us to let God’s promises and presence become, in his words and in the words of Hebrews, “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

If you are a believer who is tired of plastic answers, if you are a church leader or friend who wants to support people in pain without making things worse, or if you are simply someone who has looked at your life and wondered, “Is there anything beautiful about this at all,” The Ominous Struggle is well worth your time.

Check it out on Amazon!