Our language offers rich resources for understanding our chariness about giving. Avarice? Greed? Covetousness? Mammon? Materialism? Take your pick.

The word “avarice” has an ancient lineage. “Our metaphors for avarice,” William F. May reminds us, “rely inevitably on the arms and hands.” So we speak of an avaricious person as one who is “grasping,” “clutching,” “holding on,” “tight-fisted.”

“Greed” is akin to an uncontrollable appetite. It seems to be an old American affliction. Ever since the first Puritans arrived on these shores, there have been constant complaints about this aberration. The “sin of greed,” as one historian of Puritanism wrote recently, had “made the [Trans Atlantic] ocean journey as a stowaway, awaiting the right moment to step forth and be welcomed.” That “stowaway” has been with us for a long time.

“Covetousness,” the favored explanation in the nineteenth century for American stinginess, seemed like a sickness, a persistent obsession that is very difficult to shake off. We want that which is not ours. We know it is not rational or reasonable. Still it persists. Some leaders in that century thought they had discovered an “antidote to covetousness.” Adopt a “system” of giving, they said; develop a rigorous discipline that will deliver us from temptations. The success rate was not comforting.

The notion of “mammon” figured prominently in the indictment of American life during the progressive era. “The worship of Mammon is the one stupendous social fact of this generation,” a Social Gospel leader wrote of the early 1900s. Not all Americans “are debauched by the worship of Mammon, but it is the religion of the multitude. Men do believe in him; their faith is sincere and unwavering; they are ready to prove it, every day, by their works.” In short, Mammon is the true God of this country.

These four well-known explanations share at least one thing in common. Americans of every generation have usually invoked them to explain the others’ behavior or occasionally in moments of confession about our own past failures.

So where do we begin in trying to fathom our present confusions? Sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University suggests another point of departure. “The vast majority of Americans – about 84 percent – believe that materialism has become a serious social problem.” “Except for drugs and crime, the fears of people we talked to [in a 1990s national survey] focused more on the effects of materialism on their families than anything else.”

Wuthnow went on to note that “for most of us, materialism is not so much a source of untrammeled regret as of profound ambivalence. We worry about it, bemoaning its hold over us, but we also seem unwilling to do very much to escape its grasp.”  What one historian recently wrote about evangelical Protestants is surely true of other groups: “[E]vangelicals tend to criticize materialism the way that people complain about the weather – without plans to do anything about it.”

The clue to understanding materialism is that single word – “more.” Almost three out of every four Americans (74 percent), Wuthnow discovered in his 1990s survey, agreed with the statement – “I wish I had more money than I do.” There is really little surprising in that finding. The dynamics of “more” has driven Americans over the last two centuries. In the words of one historian, “Faithfulness to the founding covenants of the nation never meant replicating but always exceeding the achievements of predecessors. It means getting more, expecting more, and in its pathological form, getting high on more. Enough is never sufficient but always requires more.” The majority of Americans gladly echo in their own lives the classic retort of Samuel Gompers, who – when asked about the objectives of the nascent labor movement he led so well – replied, “More.”

There is little unusual about these reflections. You probably knew what we were going to say even before you read the last paragraph. Still, all of us – of whatever religious persuasion or income level – can do something besides complain about materialism. We can ask questions of ourselves. How do the dynamics of “more” work in my life? In my giving? Could this analysis begin to help me understand the anxiety and conflict deep within me about what and how I give?