What Was Arthur's Great Early Sin?

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.

Arthur's great early sin was simply a deviation from God's will.  

It should be something related to hiding (cf. Genesis 3:8).  My first remembered sin was when I hid the fact that I was wearing shorts when it was below 60 degrees outside, against my parents' wishes.  I literally pressed myself up against my parents bed so my mom wouldn't see.  Arthur's sin could have happened all the way back in childhood, maybe something he and Will did.  

Every sin after that is going to have that character of hiding.  

He's hiding from God in his band, in his love interests, in his marriage, in his family, in the cult, etc.  God can "find" him and redeem him in any one of these situations (maybe besides the cult).  But, whatever life he's in, he gets restless because he can hear "footsteps in the dark."

Those footsteps belong to the Hound of Heaven.

Arthur probably should have joined the Cistercians or some other austere order in the first place.  His "first love" of Catholic mysticism remains an ongoing dalliance throughout all these phases, but, like a lot of people in our modern age, he gets duped into looking elsewhere.  Plus, it's more hiding.

I like the ideas that we threw around about the cult initially.  First of all, I like appropriating your "Fist of Karma" name.  I found a quote of yours from earlier in our discussions where you talked about the "two contradictory extremes that cults offer: the promise of transcendent god-like wisdom and complete self-abnegation."  

That's a very pagan (or Manichaean or Gnostic) approach to mysticism.  

I don't think the doctrine is overly important, but it intersects slightly with our story in that part of its novitiate involves handing all documentation of one's prior existence over to the cult--that would include photos, VHS tapes, report cards...

And--most importantly for the purpose of our story--recorded music and written lyrics.