I always find myself laughing when I watch a new episode of The OC. I have lived in the real Orange County all of my life, and the TV version certainly is not the O.C. I know. My life is not nearly as exciting, controversial, dramatic and glamorous as the TV version. I'll say this: My life sure isn't like Seth's or Ryan's. And I wouldn't want it to be—especially as I think about their attitude toward sex. Watching this TV version of where I live, I can't help but think, Boy, the people in this town really like having sex.

I guess it makes sense that people on shows like The OC, One Tree Hill and Summerland enjoy sex so much. It is supposed to be pleasurable and fun. God says so. He ought to know. He created it. In fact, there's quite a bit in the Bible about the beauty of sex and love (especially in Song of Songs).

But this is not the whole story. The Bible tells us that God has meaningful reasons other than pleasure for sex.

God Created Us for Intimacy
After Ned Flanders' wife dies on The Simpsons, Ned believes he's finally found another woman to love. They sleep together. When he learns she isn't ready for marriage, Ned feels completely empty and worthless. He feels like a part of him left when she left.

Ned's experience demonstrates an important truth from the Bible. One purpose of sex is to experience real intimacy—to know someone in a deep and complete way. Intimacy is feeling like you belong to someone else, and that person belongs to you. It makes you one with a person—the kind of "one-flesh" closeness God designed for a man and woman who are married (Genesis 2:24). Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:16: "There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact" (The Message). God doesn't mean for anyone to share this "spiritual mystery" with someone they don't want to truly know and be known by in the lifelong commitment of marriage.

The pain, emptiness and regret Ned felt was from sharing the ultimate means of knowing someone—and then having that intimacy torn away. God wants us to stay away from sex outside of a life-long commitment because he wants to protect us from that pain.

In Elizabethtown, Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst's characters make love—and then later realize they are in love. This is the reverse of what God wants. You can have sex with a person without really loving them, but you can't experience true intimacy with a person without loving them selflessly through the joys and struggles of married life together. God wants intimacy to be more important than sex. Sex can last a night, but intimacy is meant to last forever.

God Wants a Lasting Commitment
In an episode of Summerland, Jess McCartney's character loses his virginity by candlelight on the beach. The next day, he catches the girl flirting with another guy. What's he do? He immediately asks another girl out.

It seems like sex doesn't mean a whole lot in Hollywood—as if you can just do it with whoever you want. But that attitude ignores God's purpose of sex as a lifelong commitment to one person. Mark 10:8-9 says that God made man and woman so that "the two will become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" (NIV). That last line is important. Once you've created a bond through sex, God didn't mean for it to ever be separated. God meant for sex to be an unbreakable promise two people make with each other. The Bible calls sex an important "marital duty" that spouses commit to share only with each other (1 Corinthians 7:2-5). In fact, the verse speaks so highly of this commitment that it says, "The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife" (NIV).

Homer wrestled with temptation on The Simpsons when he was assigned to work closely with a female coworker. As they worked together, Homer learned they had a lot in common. He felt a strong attraction to her and considered cheating on Marge. At the conclusion of the episode, Homer learns that there is more to love and sex than common interests and physical attractions. Instead, he realized that love is also about responsibility and commitment.

God's Family Plan
On Lost, Claire and her infant son are stranded an ocean or two away from the baby's father. But that really doesn't matter because the father left Claire before the baby was even born. He decided he wasn't ready for a family.

Claire's painful situation is a reminder of another reason God created sex. God knew when he made life that it was going to be impossible to get through it alone, and so he created the idea of family so we wouldn't have to.

To God, families are really important. He didn't create us to be like a bunch of stray dogs, running around the neighborhood, having sex, having babies, and then going about their business of sniffing garbage cans. There would be no intimacy, no commitment and no caring families. The father would never go back and see how the baby was, and once the baby was old enough to survive without the mother's milk, the mother wouldn't really care about what happened to it. But God didn't make us like dogs. He wants us to use sex to create a family.

The Osbournes introduced us to one of the most dysfunctional families in the world. But despite all of their problems, they always came together as a family. It was clear that Ozzy and Sharon would do anything for their children. On last year's season finale of The OC, Kirsten Cohen didn't realize she was an alcoholic until her family stepped in and staged an intervention. Without her family's concern and action, her addiction would have continued.

The Bible says parents are important because "when you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you" (Proverbs 6:22, NIV). God wants members of a family to always be there for each other—no matter what. And that's because God designed our lives—even from conception—to be all about family and love.

Discover the Secret
What happens on TV and what happens in real life are not always the same. I know, I've lived in Orange County and it's sure not The OC. But we also need to realize that popular ideas in life are also not always God's way. In fact, these popular ideas are often Satan's way. He does everything he can to lure us away from God's plan for sex. He confuses the meaning of sex. He helps us forget what it was really created for. He twists God's beautiful gift into something ugly and harmful and dangerous. From abortion to AIDS and STDs to Internet pornography, we see the terrible consequences of Satan's twisted influence.

But there is a much better way. God wants us to "flee from sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:19). When we do, we will discover the secret of true and lasting sexual pleasure.

Read more from 'Sex & Abstinence'

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