Lies In The Sand (The Ballad Of...)

This song is about the contrast between bona-fide true-hearted preachers like Billy Graham ("his hands tremble as he points it out") and con artists like Michael Warnke ("the man who says he was a satanic beast"). The truths and the lies are all so convincing... which is which? Who is really speaking for God? Both? Neither?

My journey through faith and into atheism ran fairly parallel to King's X's. At the time this song was released, I was struggling to hang on. Less than 4 months ago, I read "God's Funeral" by Thomas Hardy, a poem from 150 years ago that said the same thing. I gotta wonder if Dug had read this poems before he wrote this song. The line about the man saying there is a light in the sky is spot on with the last couple of stanzas of the poem. Somehow, we seem programmed with the desire to believe.

InterpretationInvitation: My favourite Ty-sung song is 'Lies in the Sand (the Ballad of...), and I'd love to hear some interpretations. I think about 'the sand' in terms of the desert of biblical stories. The first lines seem to speak of someone who claims visions of God: There's a man, who says there is a light in the sky All my friends say he's telling a lie But he speaks with such passion that I have to think about The next verse goes the 'opposite' direction, where someone claims to direct demons: There's a man who says he was a satanic beast And the many were there at his feet And he scared all the people, 'cause he was just what we want [see parallels there with Mark 5:1-20,Luke 8:26-39] There's also the connection between "the man" and Mike Warnke (debunked "Satanic cult leader" turned Christian). The chorus, though, hints that the whole contraption is just bunk, humans claiming to see things to feel important, maybe because we can't deal with uncertainty. (Side note, that chorus is my favourite as far as King's X harmonies. When dUg comes in underneath...it's a real brotherhood outside of the brotherhood of faith.) The last verse, before the abrupt fade, goes: There are things that will surely seem as they are not And I might not know all that I've got But the bluffing is easy, and I haven't seen your hand The most obvious metaphor is about playing cards and 'showing your hand', but it also harkens to Doubting Thomas wanting to see Jesus' wounds in his hands (John 20:24-29). So I wonder if this is (St.) Thomas' ballad. I think one thing that hits so hard about this song is the fact that, from what I've read in interviews, Ty was the only one who really held on to any Christian beliefs, and you really hear him voicing a struggle here. I think a lot of King’s X fans followed a similar journey of first being attracted to the band because of a camaraderie of faith, but then later seeing that this is just a kind of perpetually self-sustaining mechanism. I see this song as voicing someone who’s on the cusp, who wants to trash the whole machine: god, the devil, angels, miracles, revelations…the whole explanatory mechanism (the 'bluffing'). Rev dUg sez: "The greatest thing that happened to me was, when I stopped believing in God, I stopped believing in the Devil. When I stopped believing in the Devil, all my fear went away. I'm not afraid to die, I'm not afraid to walk down the street. I'm not looking over my shoulder thinking the Devil's going to get me, or 'God is watching me, so I'd better not do that,' when there's nothing wrong with what I've done. We used to preach when you come to Christ you're free, and you have peace and you have happiness. Well, for me, I got all that stuff when I stopped believing in God. I was in prison, I was unhappy. I felt like I didn't fit in-- And then people tell me that I didn't believe in God in the first place. Well, I totally did. I gave my whole life to it. I studied it. I learned it. I lived it. I really, really did." (http://www.inmusicwetrust.com/articles/46h07.html) A-men!