I've had a similar experience in Ruby where metaprogramming was used in favor of objects with functions. When I had issues, it was very hard to debug.
Maybe it comes down to the quality of the abstraction. I think the point of a good abstraction is you don't have to go down to the layer below.
Or maybe this is a board full of programmers who love to fret over unimportant minutia.
The idea has a well understood meaning, just use that meaning. Yes, maybe somewhere on the edges it's fuzzy, learn to live with fuzzy.
If we are debating an API design and a colleague says "it's too much magic", is that bad thing? If I write deliverEmail(email) and the e-mail "magically" gets sent, what's wrong with that?
On the other hand, if we debate the abstraction itself--for example behavior doesn't match user expectations--then we can do better at improving the API design.