Surrender to Love (https://amzn.to/3ShgiG7) by David G. Benner was published in 2003 by InterVarsity Press. It is the first in Benner’s Spiritual Journey trilogy along with The Gift of Being Yourself and Desiring God’s Will. It is a short, but powerful book focusing on how love and surrender are at the heart of Christian spirituality.

Summary of Surrender to Love

The next section addresses the role of love in the journey of transformation. We are called to surrender to God’s love. We need to allow ourselves to be loved unconditionally. This happens through experience, not belief. Believing that you are loved unconditionally is different than experiencing God’s unconditional love.

The last section ends with a discussion of how love helps us become more like Jesus. Love helps us connect with other people. Love must include concern for social justice. It must also include ecological concern for nature. It is ultimately the fulfillment of our psychospiritual development. Real change is possible.

Top Takeaways from Surrender to Love

Experience Versus Belief

Our first takeaway from Surrender to Love is defining Christian conversion through experience rather than belief. The claim is that most people call themselves Christian on the basis of belief more than experience. This resonates with our approach to spiritual formation. Intellectual assent to propositional facts doesn’t capture the breadth of the Christian conversion experience. Belief without experience is going to be fragile at best and ineffective at worst. The mechanics of salvation are mysterious. We can’t fully understand how it works. We do know that experience must be a part of it. Experience can look different in different people, but surrender is an essential element for everyone.

Vulnerability

The second takeaway is the prominent role that vulnerability plays in being able to receive God’s unconditional love.

The single most important thing I have learned in over thirty years of study of how love produces healing is that love is transformational only when it is received in vulnerability.

Surrender To Love – page 73

Common experience makes it apparent to most of us that experiencing God’s love and choosing to follow Jesus doesn’t always immediately lead to the radical change that is required. Radical change can only happen when we come to experience God’ unconditional love from a place of true vulnerability. This begins with a true understanding of ourselves. God loves us just as we are. Only once we surrender our true selves to God, are we able to receive his unconditional love. It is this love that then leads to genuine transformation.

Critique of Surrender to Love

Atonement and the Cross

Our first critique is the underemphasis of the role of the cross and importance of atonement. The picture Benner provides of conversion as surrendering to God’s unconditional love from a place of vulnerability is true, but incomplete. Benner has a couple pages in chapter five where he discusses the cross.

The conversion of the heart that lies at the core of Christian spiritual transformation begins at the cross. It involves meeting God’s love in the cross, not simply encountering some judicial solution for the problem of human sin.

Surrender to Love – page 87

Meeting God’s love in the cross must include a notion of atonement. It is a love that pays the penalty for our sin. It isn’t just that God loves us as we are (which of course he does). God wants a reconciled relationship with us that is only made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We are loved and redeemed. God sees us just has he sees his son Jesus, perfect and without sin. Putting atonement and love together then leads to a more robust and compelling picture.

The Holy Spirit

The second critique is the role of the Holy Spirit. Benner does explicitly say that surrendering to God’s love is the work of the Spirit, but much of the language around transformation focuses on the action of surrendering in order for the Spirit to do his work. Benner uses the analogy of floating in the river of the Spirit. When we look up out of the water, we start to sink. When we lay on our back (surrender), we are supported by the water. While subtle, it is important to understand what agency is involved with surrendering. We know we can’t do it on our own. Does that mean God does it (through the Holy Spirit) or we do it by taking the action of surrendering? Maybe it is somehow both. Clarity around the role the Spirit plays in the act of surrendering itself would be a helpful addition.

Evaluation of Surrender to Love

It is clear that Benner is writing from the perspective of a psychologist. Psychology has a lot to contribute to the discussion around spiritual formation. Understanding the role our thoughts and emotions play in determining our view of reality is an important step in the process of change and also in the process of healing. The links between psychology and theology are not always clear, but it is clear that psychological insights can be a helpful supplement to theology.

There are exercises for further reflection at the end of each chapter. This will help guide the reader to apply the principles discussed in the chapter within their own lived experiences. There are two separate discussion guides in the appendix. One is broken into five shorter meetings and the other one is created for a single, longer session. Like most aspects of spiritual formation, this book is also best experienced in community. It lends itself well to a group study or book club.