Traditions play a central role in our daily lives and in our churches. They are even, in a way, reassuring. But beware: by blindly following them, we risk missing God’s plan for our lives.

Several times a year, we celebrate different holidays. Whether it’s Christmas, Easter, or special dates like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc. For each of these holidays, we have our little traditions. For some, it is the Christmas tree, brunch for Easter, or turkey for Thanksgiving. We often put a lot of pressure on ourselves to continue family traditions. Even if we say we do all this to honor our families, we must admit that there is also a good deal of comfort in following traditions.

Without realizing it, we also follow all sorts of traditions in our daily lives. Even the most modern churches follow a kind of protocol that honors beautiful traditions. When we know what to expect at a Sunday service, we can focus more on the person at the center of those traditions: Christ (or at least, that is what we should do). Perhaps this is partly why going to church brings us so much comfort.

We could even say traditions seep into our thoughts as well. Our family has always thought this way, so we think the same. To illustrate this point, there is often the story of the young girl who wondered why you had to cut off both ends of the roast beef before cooking it: it looked so small in the big roasting pan. Her mother replied, “Because my mother always did it that way!” So the girl asked her grandmother why she did it that way. And her grandmother replied, “Because my mother always did it that way too.” So, the young girl asked her great-grandmother the same question, and her great-grandmother replied, “Because back then, my roasting pan wasn’t big enough.” When we perpetuate a tradition without questioning it, we can lose out.

This is what we find in one of the lines spoken by Job’s friends in the book that bears his name. Bildad tells Job to repent because, if we rely on the tradition of his elders, the reason everything is going wrong in Job’s life is that he sinned. We know, from reading the whole story, that this wasn’t the case for Job. His suffering wasn’t the result of his sins. But Bildad relied on tradition to explain Job’s situation. “Ask a previous generation and verify the findings of your ancestors, for we are only recently here and don’t know because our days on earth are a shadow. Won’t they instruct you and tell you; will words not proceed from their hearts?” (Job 8:8-10 CEB). We do indeed draw much wisdom from the experience of those who came before us, and following their teachings closely can be comforting. But we must always keep our hearts open to the Holy Spirit. Our situation may be different from that of our ancestors.

We often hear the same “encouragement” messages given to single people, such as “if you do God’s will, He will give you your husband,” or “be patient, your wife will come.” While there are valuable lessons to be learned from these words, we must also be open to the Holy Spirit to guide our steps toward a future marriage. Just because our parents or spiritual leaders did one thing to meet their life partners doesn’t mean we have to follow the same steps. The same goes for our cultural traditions. Just because women in our culture don’t talk to men doesn’t mean those traditions are the way forward for us today. Following traditions can be comforting, but following God’s personal plan for our lives is far more effective (Colossians 2:8).