It's Friday, June 20, 2025. I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

There are all kinds of interesting developments in the media stories that come from here and there.

And a lot of them appear to be interesting,

but we need to focus on the ones that are not only interesting but important. And the important

ones should be of interest to us. And may well, when it comes to Christians, be interesting

for reasons that are unique to Christians alone, or at least have a dimension that Christians alone can understand.

So I want to go to a story that comes from Brazil. Leonardo Coelho and Michael Levinson reporting

for the New York Times offered an article. It was given considerable space in the New York Times

entitled, Extremely Life-like Dolls Create a Frenzy in Brazil.

As the article reveals, these dolls are known as Reborn Dolls,

and the article tells us that they, quote,

provide comfort, escape, or just plain fun.

But not so funny to some politicians in Brazil,

who have taken efforts to try to adopt legislation saying that these dolls are not to be, for instance, given seats on buses or admitted into

hospitals, etc. It seems crazy, but this is a serious news article and a serious newspaper. And I think as Christians we understand,

there's something very serious going on here. So the report coming from Rio, that is Rio de Janeiro,

in Brazil, and Levinson in New York, they tell us, quote, a young woman posts a video that

appears to show her holding her baby, bento, and packing his bag for a trip to the hospital.

She calls it one of the busiest and scariest days for me.

According to the report, she grabs onesies, a bottle in medical documents, and tucks them in the back of a car.

At the hospital, he is weighed and lies in a bed where she removes his pacifier, bottle feeds him, and wipes a few drops of formula

from his cheek. But then the Times tells us, and again, this is the New York Times.

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