"I'll be there for you, 'cos you're there for me too ..." Six friends who stick together through thick and thin, sharing one another's pain, rejoicing at their happiness. What could be more Christian?

The problem some Christians might have with the adventures of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe is that for all their character strengths, their lifestyles are so unChristian. Story lines have included: Phoebe acting as a surrogate mother for her brother's in vitro fertilised children; Ross's wife Carol, pregnant with his unborn child, leaving him for another woman, whom she eventually "marries" in a travesty of a traditional wedding service; Chandler's father leaving his mother for the pool boy and now enjoying a career as a drag singer in Las Vegas. All six enjoy a lifestyle in which sex is the beginning rather than the consummation of a relationship: if you are lucky it can lead to love, then to moving in together and ultimately to marriage, though so far only Chandler and Monica have made it through to this last stage (and Ross — three times) whereas the others are lucky to reach even the second. Supportive these friends might be, always ready with a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold as people they love go through crisis after crisis; what never occurs to them is that these crises are all too often self-induced. Yet because their skewed idea of morality is their idea of normality, they cannot understand why they can't get what each of them ultimately aspires to — a stable, loving relationship.

What has to be remembered about Friends is that it is not an advertisement for this kind of living — instead it satirises elements already abundant in American (and Western) life. Their attitudes to life are not confined to the studio but are all too prevalent out in the real world.

To help with this real-world identification, each of the six has a particular character flaw that is exaggerated for comic effect, and from which much of the humour is derived. The basic character of each is friendly and likeable, but: Ross is a tedious academic pedant; Monica is a control freak; Chandler fears commitment; Phoebe is a new age evangelist; Rachel is a spoilt little rich girl; Joey is unashamedly promiscuous. Much of the humour derives from these traits — it is not that we laugh at the characters, rather it is that these traits help them get into situations that amuse. Everyone has met someone who is a little bit like Ross, a touch of Rachel, a dash of Chandler.

It will come as a surprise to a lot of Christians but Jesus himself was not averse to this kind of humour. Consider the parable of the feast (Luke 14:16-24), whose humour is all too often lost in a po-faced Sunday morning Bible reading. The excuses of the invited guests are clearly pathetic: one man has bought a field without apparently first inspecting it; another has bought some oxen and only now wants to try them out. A modern equivalent would be buying a house and only then getting it surveyed, or buying a car before taking it for a test spin. Jesus was talking to people who lived in a highly mercantile society. They would have recognised these deliberately exaggerated stupidities and would have been splitting their sides laughing, at the same time as they took on board the message.

No, I am not claiming Friends to be a modern-day parable. I am claiming a similar effect in that as well as entertaining, it provides insights — sometimes uncomfortable ones — into the modern, Western lifestyle.

There are many strengths to Friends. Religion is present: every marriage or funeral depicted in the series has been at least approximately Christian, even the lesbian wedding. ("Nothing makes God happier than two people, any two people, coming together," declared the presiding minister in her address, suggesting she has perhaps never read Luke 15:7.) The main theme of one Christmas episode was Ross's determination to teach his young son Ben about Hanukkah and his Jewish heritage.

Although, as previously said, marriage and sex tend to come completely the wrong way round in Friends, marriage is still the end to aspire to in a relationship. There have been episodes dealing with adulterous affairs, committed either knowingly or in ignorance, and Friends pulls no punches in condemning such activity. Marriage, when it happens, is acknowledged as an institution requiring trust and fidelity. Ross, though now thrice-divorced, has made every reasonable effort (and some unreasonable) to save each of those marriages. The characters in Friends are sexually immoral by strict Christian standards but they are not into free love.

The two pregnancy storylines in Friends have both been due to the real-world pregnancies of the actresses, conceived in lawful wedlock with their actual spouses. (Actress Lisa Kudrow, who plays Phoebe, has stated publicly that she was a virgin on her wedding night.) (n.b. not actually true, I now realise. Only Lisa Kudrow was genuinely pregnant.) The producers of the show had to do something to explain the obviously pregnant women, so they took the situation and used it. The story of Phoebe and her surrogate pregnancy for her brother's children, as well as being played for laughs, also raised serious issues about the whole idea of surrogate pregnancy which, let's face it, is a more and more common occurrence. Rachel's baby was conceived in a more conventional manner, the result of a one-night stand with Ross and a failed contraceptive; but again, as well as being played for laughs, the storyline has raised issues of single-parenthood in the modern world. Rachel, who entered the show as a spoilt, air-headed prom queen, has had to face up to the fact that her carefree days are well and truly over.

All the friends are honest, upright, tax-paying citizens. They earn their livings; they do not do drugs; they do not lie, cheat or steal; and when they are in a relationship, they are faithful within that relationship. They are the kind of people that you would not mind having as your neighbours — unless, perhaps, you actually had to talk to them.

And it is this all-round "niceness" that is the key to understanding Friends. It simply reflects, and amplifies for comic effect, the natural state of a life without God.

All of us have been asked at one time or another why we need to be Christian. Why go that last extra step? If you don't murder, cheat, steal, why do you need Jesus? Can't we just a lead a good life?

Friends shows us that, no, we cannot.

Our state of original sin means that without the assistance of the Holy Spirit we cannot begin to work out what God wants of us. We have a vague idea that we should be nice to one another; that love and fidelity are good things; that tolerance is to be encouraged. But, deprived of real and worthwhile guidance through the scriptures, we follow the instincts of our nature and go off course exactly as shown in the series. The Bible tells us what the Lord requires of us: to do justly, love mercy and humbly walk with him (Micah 6:8). Friends, and most people out in the real world, only manage two out of these three, and this is a case where two out of three is still bad.

This article has concentrated on those aspects of Friends that might be disturbing to some Christians. It must be stressed that ninety percent of the humour in Friends is good, honest comedy, based on nothing more contentious than witty scripting and good acting. It can even be useful for Christian students as an endless source of case studies and examples from the non-Christian world. And it is a pleasant and amusing way to kill half an hour on a Friday evening.