I learned so much!

Just looking for some assistance on my cholesterol understanding if anyone has a spare minute or two. Shaka, or any of the other doctors on board, thank you guys in advance!

So my science background ends with the C+ I got in AP Bio senior year in high school (which would have been way worse if I wasn't nice to the smart kids sitting next to me). Since HQ has shifted focus after the new year I've been trying to learn more about the stuff posted. A lot of it feels over my head, but I think I might have the general idea with cholesterol and was hoping someone could check my work, so to speak. I guess I just wonder, if cholesterol doesn't cause all this bad stuff, then what exactly does it do and how did it get mistaken for causing all the bad stuff? Here's what I have come to understand:

Our body makes cholesterol to help good things happen. When we do bad things to our body (smoke, stress out, eat an entire loaf of bread), it makes more cholesterol to help things get better. But instead of trying to fix the bad things we do to our body (smoking, stressing out, eating bread), we mistake cholesterol as the problem? Kinda like how in the Dark Knight when Batman was blamed for the bad things in Gotham instead of the unstable city/police administration? Elevated Batman sightings/activity meant more bad stuff going on he needed to fix.

Is that in the right direction?