I finished Luke Burgis's new book The One and the Ninety-Nine last week, and I haven't stopped thinking about it.

The subtitle is "Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion" - which makes it sound like a book about social media and conformity. It is that. But it's also something deeper: a meditation on what it means to become a solid self rather than a pseudo-self, and how that formation shapes whether you can stay in a place - an institution, a community, a parish - even when you don't completely fit in.

That question landed hard for me. I'm in the middle of a sabbatical from active parish ministry, asking exactly those questions. Do I run from what I don't like or agree with? Or do I do something to try to affect it from the inside?

The Solid Self and the Pseudo-Self

Burgis draws an important foundational distinction that's been stuck with me:

A pseudo-self is an identity stitched together from external pressures - whatever the crowd rewards, whatever the institution expects, whatever will smooth the friction and keep the peace. It's reactive, it shifts, an it's assembled from borrowed pieces (which, at the end of the day are only pieces).

A solid self is something else. It's a person with a center - someone whose identity is rooted deeply enough that they can belong to a group without fusing with it. They can disagree without rupturing the relationship. They can stay in a difficult place without losing themselves.

The question isn't whether you're influenced by others. Of course you are - that's Burgis's whole point from his first book Wanting. The question is whether you have enough interior stability to hold your own convictions while remaining in communion with people who don't share them.

However, there's a trap: even contrarianism can be a form of the pseudo-self. Burgis writes that "when people try to stand out through rivalry, they usually end up more alike than different." Reactionary positions that exist only to oppose the crowd are still scripted by the crowd. You're not free just because you're disagreeing - you might just be playing the opposite role in the same drama.

The solid self isn't the conformist or the contrarian. It's something harder: a person rooted deeply enough to stay in communion without fusing, to challenge without rupturing, to belong without losing themselves.

A Different Reading of the Parable

We usually read the parable of the lost sheep as a rescue mission. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one who wandered off, and brings them back to the fold. The one is restored to the whole. The flock is complete again. I've preached on it through that lens.

But Burgis suggests another layer. What if the parable isn't just about rescuing the one and making them fit back into the ninety-nine? What if it's about protecting the one's unique vocation within the whole - allowing them to be their individual self in the context of the community, not absorbed by it?

The ninety-nine is always pulling toward conformity. The crowd wants everyone to look alike, think alike, stay in line. But the shepherd goes after the one precisely because each person is irreplaceable, not interchangeable. The one matters as the one - not as a data point to be reintegrated into the mass.

What This Means for Staying

This reframe changes everything about how I think about parish life.

The temptation when you're frustrated with an institution - a parish, a workplace, an organization - is to leave. Find somewhere that fits better. Stop fighting the tide.

But Burgis is asking a harder question: What kind of self are you becoming in the process of staying or leaving? Are you developing the interior stability to remain in a difficult place without losing your convictions? Or are you fusing with whatever community happens to match your preferences at the moment?

A solid self can stay. Not because staying is always right - sometimes leaving is exactly what's needed. But because a solid self has the capacity to stay, to hold the tension, to affect change from the inside without becoming bitter or absorbed.

A pseudo-self either conforms or flees. Those are the only options when you don't have a center of your own.

The Sabbatical Question

I wrote a post a few months ago about "The Parish You're Given" - the question of staying in a place that frustrates you, blooming where you're planted, trusting that God is forming you there even when you'd rather be somewhere else. But I never clicked the button to publish it so that you could read it. It's still sitting in my queue of unpublished written work. It didn't quite feel complete.

Burgis gave me new language for that struggle that helped round out the idea of how to approach "The Parish You're Given".

The sabbatical isn't just about rest. It's about becoming the kind of person who can return - or go somewhere new - as a solid self rather than a reactive one. It's about developing the interior stability to hold my convictions about liturgy, about reverence, about what the Church truly desires, while remaining in communion with people who see it differently.

Do I run from what I don't like? Or do I do something to try to affect it from the inside?

The answer depends on who I'm becoming. And that's the deeper work.

The Book

The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion by Luke Burgis. Published by St. Martin's Press, June 2026.

If you've ever felt the pressure to conform and sensed what it was costing you - in a parish, a workplace, a family, a culture - this book is worth your time. It's not self-help. It's not business strategy. It's a meditation on what it means to become someone with a center, and why that matters for everything else.