Your fear of macros is natural, since they are not typical for a programming language. It is expected that a newcomer to Lisp is likely to have a hard time grasping macros.
You should not be disregarding one of the most powerful features of Lisp due to a lack of understanding. Imagine if a Haskell programmer rejected typeclasses because they are initially difficult to write and potentially difficult to grasp.
You should not be disregarding one of the most powerful features of Lisp due to a lack of understanding. Imagine if a Haskell programmer rejected typeclasses because they are initially difficult to write and potentially difficult to grasp.
If you want a taste of the power of Lisp macros, check out "Monad Macros in Common Lisp" by David Sorokin (https://cl-monad-macros.common-lisp.dev/monad-macros.htm).