When someone makes a choice with overwhelming or dangerous implications, an observer might comment that the person is "taking a tiger by the tail."

According to Dictionary.com, this figure of speech means that a person has taken on "something too difficult to manage or cope with." If you were literally holding a tiger by the tail, you couldn't let go without being bitten, but you would have to let go to escape.

Golf icon and celebrity Tiger Woods was recently caught holding the tail of an extremely destructive "tiger"—the sin of adultery. No one escapes this "tiger" unharmed.

Playing with fire

Tiger Woods' story has captivated news headlines since mid-December. Reports of multiple extramarital affairs exposed the reality that Mr. Woods' personal life was out of control. His megastar public image was poised, confident and squeaky clean. What happened?

The last half of Proverbs 6 contains a father's plea, warning his son to avoid the treacherous hazards of adultery. Consider these main points:

• Verse 27: "Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?" Like the metaphor of "taking a tiger by the tail," the point of this rhetorical question is that you cannot escape unharmed. Adultery is as dangerous as fire. If you get near it, you get burned—period.

• Verse 29: "So is he [the one who plays with fire] who goes in to his neighbor's wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent." Mr. Woods briefly tried to pretend that nothing was wrong when stories of his infidelity broke, but the charade of innocence was quickly overwhelmed by the reality of his actions.

• Verse 32: "Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding; he who does so destroys his own soul." Keen understanding of athletics and business could not save Mr. Woods from a terrible lack of understanding of personal conduct. The resulting emotional damage to himself and others was dramatic and painful.

• Verse 33: "Wounds and dishonor he will get, and his reproach will not be wiped away." Unhappily for Tiger, his family and his fans, this verse is true to the core.

Having everything but what you want

In the short story Babylon Revisited, American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald used the fictional character Charlie Wales to depict life as many experienced it during the late 1920s. The story is set just after the U.S. stock market crash of October 1929. In one very poignant scene, a bartender says to Charlie, "I heard that you lost a lot in the crash."

"I did," he replies, "but I lost everything I wanted in the boom."

In June 2009, a Forbes.com article named Tiger as the highest paid athlete on the planet. By many accounts he is also the most famous. Yet ironically, at the peak of the most remarkable "boom" period ever witnessed in an athlete's career, Mr. Woods' personal life fell apart in shambles.

In the midst of the boom, Tiger lost focus on the one thing that we all crave most deeply as humans—happy, fulfilling, stable relationships. There is a repentant road back from adultery, and let's hope that Mr. Woods finds it. You can read, Marriage and Family: the Missing Dimension to see the greater picture of marriage.

Remember the Seventh Commandment against adultery. Realize that touching that "tiger" is never worth it. By thinking vertically, you can avoid the pain of that mistake and instead experience happiness that exceeds the highest pinnacle of wealth, fame and popularity you can imagine. VT