My Sunday school class has been learning about Moses recently. One week, we did daytime talk-show host interviews with characters from the patriarch's life story: "Oprah" interviewed Pharaoh's daughter, who found baby Moses in the river. "Ellen DeGeneres" talked with Moses' sister, who was key in making sure that he returned to his biological mother to be nursed until he was old enough to go live in Pharaoh's house. And "Montel" had a heart-to-heart with Moses' mom about giving up her baby in order to save him.

Except for the bit about the homicidal Pharaoh wanting to kill all the male Hebrew slave babies, my middle-schoolers thought this Moses guy's story was pretty heartwarming. Then we got to the part about Moses himself being a murderer.

While still living in Pharaoh's house under the auspices of Pharaoh's daughter, he saw an Egyptian overseer beating one of the Hebrew slaves. Moses killed the overseer and buried his body in the sand. He was quickly found out and had to flee.

Then an amazing thing happened: God used this murderer to lead the slaves out of bondage and trusted him to teach a new set of sacred laws to thousands of people. Yeah, my students thought that was kind of weird, too.

Moses' story led to a discussion of the Nov. 7 advisory referendum on reinstating the death penalty, and whether there was any person who couldn't be changed enough to be useful to society. Some of the kids had their doubts.

"What about the guy who killed the Jimmy John's driver?" James wanted to know, asking about Michael Green's shooting of sandwich deliveryman Joseph Munz during a holdup this autumn.

I happened to know that one of the other Sunday school teachers, just down the hall, used to be Green's teacher at Washington High School. Green was a smart student, very polite, and a hard worker, she said. After high school, Green went to prison for three years for accidentally running over a 3-year-old boy as he sped down the street. The teacher wrote him while he was in prison, and saw him after he was released. He was remorseful, and ready to start a new, more positive life. Next time she heard about him, he was in the paper for killing Munz. What went wrong?

Can Michael Green be redeemed, like Moses and many other murderers in the Bible? I'm horrified at what Green did, but it's not for me to judge whether he should live or die. I hope that during his time in prison he can find a way to repair some of the pain caused to Munz's family and community. He can't bring his victim back to life, but he can commit the rest of his life to serving others and working to end violence. If we kill him, as death penalty supporters might like us to do, it cheats God out of his chance to finally make something good out of Michael Green's life.