Many Americans with a 401(k) plan, a stock broker or a pension find themselves wondering of late whether their attempt to save or invest for retirement will actually bring them financial security or merely enrich those with whom they've entrusted their money.

Enron, Tyco and Worldcom — once the darlings of Wall Street — were recommended with fervor by stock analysts and financial gurus whose prophecies of prosperity turned to dust, along with billions of shareholder dollars.

Those and similar debacles led former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 2002, in testifying before Congress, to diagnose America's national illness as "infectious greed."

Whatever its manifestations may be, religious figures throughout history have acknowledged greed as one of the seven deadly sins most capable of securing a shallow spiritual outcome for its suitors. The irony of enriching one's pockets while simultaneously shriveling one's soul was perhaps best illustrated by Charles Dickens, whose classic, "A Christmas Carol," has given a name to the Scrooges of the world ever since.

Millions who will never step inside a Fortune 500 boardroom, frequent the country club or carry a Neiman Marcus card can wonder "How much is enough?" not only while looking to make ends meet but when moral questions about homelessness, world hunger and Third World debt arise. Not that money itself is evil. It is the unbridled quest for it above all else — and the hoarding of it at the expense of others — that has garnered moral condemnation through the ages.

Israel's god, addressing the refugees wandering in Sinai, ended his list of commandments with "Thou shalt not covet," proceeding to give a list of relationships and possessions subject to the law. Some translate covetousness as greed, while others would call it envy.

Buddha identified greed, hatred and delusion as impediments to righteous living, naming them "the three poisons," and Hindu teaching codifies a long list of vices including miserliness, pride and theft as originating with covetousness.

While Jesus assured his followers that the poor would ever be with us, his answer about how people with means should treat them didn't involve philosophizing about their lack of initiative. He warned against measuring who people are by what they have.

Yet the tendency to do just that, while elevating the status of wealth for its own sake, seems to have seeped deeply into the consciousness of some, not only on Wall Street, but possibly even on your street. Russell Belk, the N. Eldon Tanner Professor at the University of Utah School of Business, said materialism is not necessarily the same as greed but is a motivating force that ties into it. "At the highest levels of materialism, people believe that having things is the greatest source of pleasure and not having them is the greatest source of pain in life."