What God thinks about you is much more important than what others think about you. If you perfectly perceived how he sees you, maximizing his pleasure would be the obviously optimal decision. Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely that you know how God sees you, and while this book gives you powerful tools to improve your idea of how he sees you, it is possible that you are still in a position where someone else might see you more closely to how God does than you do.
What others think of you only matters to the extent they are more like God than you are. Note that this does not upgrade the value of someone’s opinion simply because they claim to be a Christian, nor does it preclude the opinion of a particular atheist being more correct than that of a particular Christian. Many who claim not to believe in God are more like him in at least some way than many who claim to believe in him. To follow the Lord is to be different and better—not just compared to those who know they hate God, but also compared to those who think they love him but don’t. To follow God requires you to turn away from most people who claim to be Christians and think, say, and do things that are far from God’s actual purpose and character.
If a person isn’t more like God than you, than their opinion should be assumed to indicate what to avoid rather than what to seek:
1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23)
Seek out those who are most like God among those you know, and value their opinion of you above that of anyone else.