When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish,
And the hope of the unjust perishes.
The righteous is delivered from trouble,
And it comes to the wicked instead.
The hypocrite with his mouth destroys his neighbor,
But through knowledge the righteous will be delivered.
When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices;
And when the wicked perish, there is jubilation.
By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted,
But it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
Proverbs 11:7-11 (NKJV).
Why do we like to see the "bad guys" lose and the "good guys" win?
At the heart, it's about what the motivations were for actions taken, more than the actions taken.
The "bad guy" slays many "good", and the "good guy" slays many "bad", but it's what makes them "good" or "bad" that has the audience at home rooting for them, or for their downfall.
The wicket set their sights on undoing what already is, so that they can replace it with a design of their own. The righteous instead seek to understand what already is, so that something new can be manifest from what is currently hidden away. The wicked have their goals set is corruption, destruction, in consumption, where the righteous have theirs set in understanding, patience, in self-awareness.
In this passage, we are shown the most basic formula for not only how we seek to live, but also how we are entertained, how we are inspired.
There is a reason that science came out of a Western Civilization that worshiped, albeit imperfectly, the God of the Bible. No other society, despite having existed for a much longer period of time, experienced such rapid advances in what would become "science". In living our lives in a way that would please God, we had revealed to us the hidden truth about things like pharmaceuticals, germ theory of disease, and those are just two big hitters in medical technology.
Materials science, physics, mathematics, all these "fields" which never existed before were made manifest, not because people were trying to get what they wanted, but because deep down we knew that God had created all these interconnected dynamics, and not only created them, but created us capable of understanding them, of examining them and then using our knowledge to build new things.
Computers aren't magic, they're the result of successive discoveries that built, one upon each other, using our best understanding how how everything works. We couldn't have done that pursuing validation of our own deity, trying to re-write the rules of reality instead of working with them.
The failures of the wicked have become ever more and more apparent as Western Civilization turns its back on God, convinced that, due to the very discoveries God enabled, that now we can replace God and things will work out just fine. We've learned "enough" and now we think we're ready to sit on the throne.
Yet look at the results. All we're doing is repeating the sins of past peoples who also rejected God, but now we have the shimmer and shine of technology to aid us. We're doing nothing that hasn't been done before, and we'll end up repeating a cycle where our great blessings become a burden, and God will graciously relieve us of them so that we can return to our true purpose.
When we pursue righteousness, our successes do not just build us up, but it produces an effect which impacts the lives of those around us as well. While never enough to cover the debt of sin, to save anyone else, when we figure out how reality works and how we can align ourselves to God's designs, everyone can benefit.
This is why people cheer on the "good guy", the righteous, because they know that the results of their labor will produce a net positive for everyone. Meanwhile, the "bad guy", the wicked, will only produce results that benefit them at the detriment of everyone else.
And now you see why it is so important for people to have a "good guy" and "bad guy" to identify in their struggles. How the modern world has not replaced this dynamic, but perverted it for its own selfish gain.
You see, the world views material salvation the way that God views eternal salvation, so the "good guy" for the world will be operating on completely different priorities than the "good guy" as God would define it.
So, again, it's not the individual, it's not what they do, it's what the motivations are. As a Christian, when you make choices which do not make you a "good guy" to the human world, you are to expect that you will be called the "bad guy", and they will cheer your perils and tribulations.
But God does not only operate on the temporal, and our souls continue on into eternity, so do not view success in the context of this life alone, as the human world does. View it on the timescale that God does, with respect to eternity, and understand that righteousness is alignment with God.
Be the "good guy" as God would define it.
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