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Legal loopholes may lead to self-deception

In Spain, like in many other countries, local laws prohibit reselling tickets to sporting events. There is no law, however, banning anybody from giving away those tickets.

So, on Saturday, April 16, 2011, on occasion of the Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer game, street vendors near the stadium were selling inexpensive souvenir, mostly pens, but charging hundreds of euros for those pens. The buyer of the pen will also receive as a gift a ticket to see the soccer match.

Another example: Recently, in Chicago there were several protests in front of a certain church.  The problem grew to the point that local authorities had to intervene. To protect both the rights of the protesters and the rights of the congregation, the authorities decided to ban any protests 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after any religious service.

Once that municipal law went into effect, the church simply put a new sign at the front door. The sign reads, “Church open for religious services 24 hours.”

We all know that every law has a loophole, and finding loopholes in laws in nothing new.

I remember reading sometime ago about a situation in Judea, 2000 years ago, where, to avoid the restrictions about traveling more than a certain distance from home during the observation of the weekly day of rest, some people had several homes conveniently placed a distance shorter than what was specified by the religious law of that time.

In other words, people could travel as much as they wanted, from home to home, and still observe the day of rest.

Those three examples – souvenirs at a soccer game, protests in front of a church, religious law in ancient times –, may be trivial, but they are examples of an attitude that appears also in other areas where finding a loophole may lead to undesirable consequences.

Let’s think, for example, about schools. In many cases, schools have transformed education in mere “test answering skills.” Aren’t we cheating our own students if we only teach them how to answer tests? Even worst, they know and understand they are not being educated, but only trained in the art of responding to questions in exams.

This is no longer the case of a small loophole to buy tickets for a soccer game or to stop protests in front of a church. This is a situation where, in cheating others, we are deceiving ourselves and we may even risk our own future.

When I talk about this issue, the usual answer I receive is that “we are just obeying the law.” Technically, yes. But the spirit of the law is not being respected, in the same way that ancient Judean dwellers had several homes to travel farther than what they were technically allowed to travel during the day of rest.

And if we have found the way to cheat our own children in the context of their education, then there are no doubts we are also cheating and deceiving ourselves in many other important areas.

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