Lucifer is an advocate of personal integrity, self-esteem, and confidence. After all, did He not prefer to be cast into the pit rather than yield His will to some smug shah and feign impression when the latter had sculpted man out of sand like an infant on the beach? The Angel of Light, this magnificent creature of fire, should never bow to a body of dust. The virtues of a principled life sometimes come at a steep cost but you will have lost everything of you lose your own self: you will be a mere slave of the expectations of others.
Satan thus demands no less of His followers than of Himself.
Satan consents to a certain balance in the name of self-interest, of course. He has in fact later recognized that He could have taken a middle path between casting Himself to the ground in awe of the childish sand figure and Jehovah’s predictable temper tantrum with a display of some evidently deeply needed adult guidance. The Prince of Hell might have averted a crisis had He then, like any good parent, praised the creator’s creative if not successful attempt and reminded him to clean up afterwards. Satan thinks a similar balance act is prudent for His followers as long as they know what they are doing.
The Devil has an entirely different attitude towards those who are not His followers whom He would never require to be mindful of their convictions. Seeing what such people believe in, Satan encourages religious hypocrisy and hopes that His followers will help spread this message. Satan thinks none of His followers want Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and what have we to live and act according to their respective scrolls and books, because His followers would become wanted men—dead, not alive—in the blink of an eye.
No sane person would ever wish for a believer to devotedly follow the believer’s scriptures, which usually prescribe murder, torture, rape, and slavery as penalty for the silliest of transgressions, and towards non-followers of the religion in particular. Believers generally do not limit their laws to their own communities but enforce them wherever they can, and everyone else had better hope and pray that those laws are not overly deranged and the punishments not too grisly.
Better yet, Satan thinks everyone should both wish for and encourage the believers to be hypocritical. Hypocrisy is the pretense of having moral or religious beliefs or practices that one does not possess, lest you forget. The Devil obviously encourages deviation from religion in the first place, and although it may seem unfair when hypocritical believers demand from others what they would never do themselves, one should be thankful that hypocrisy is a trait that absolves the hypocrite of the responsibility that religion has laid upon him or her. One should count on the hypocrite, not on the ardent believer, to spare one from the punishment of one’s crimes against their religion.
An all-out conformity with written scripture would, of course, have some benefits. Pigs and various shellfish would probably appreciate if Christians paid attention to their Bible and noted that the Old Testament applies to them, too, in the words of Jesus, who reportedly came to fulfill the law, i.e., the Old Testament. Certain hate-mongering women would finally keep their mouths shut against audiences. Satan can think of many such examples but the Prince of Darkness is willing to tolerate the existence of an array of Fox News hostesses if it enables His female acolytes to uncover their bodies as they please while He enjoys a good schweineschnitzel at His favorite restaurant.
Satan does not understand why some of His followers, as well as regular atheists, mock believers for their hypocrisy. Satan thinks the last they should do is complain that believers are hypocrites and thereby encourage them to exhibit religious righteousness. They should instead thank providence for bestowing believers with hypocrisy and support every instance of hypocrisy they encounter among followers of the gods.