Religion, Violence, and Peace

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Religion and violence
Most religions claim that they are nonviolent and that their teachings seek to promote peace. They claim that God wants people to be loving and live peacefully. They spell out repercussions for engaging in violence or causing violence while and many rewards for the people who pursue and cultivate peace. For Christians, the basis of their faith in the bible and it gives explicit instructions that all Christians should live in peace with one another and even show love and tolerance to non-Christians. Jesus, an emissary from God also teaches Christians that they should always be tolerant and love their enemies. He also tells them they should also pray for them. Jesus also tells his followers that if a person slaps one of your cheeks, you should turn on the other so he/she can slap it. In other instances, the bible tells Christians to forgive the people who wrong against them. There is also a caveat to the forgiveness; so that the Father in heaven can also forgive your sins. There is also a parable by Jesus detailing how Christians should forgive as they have been forgiven themselves. All these and many more examples in the old and new testament preach that Christians should avoid escalating differences to conflicts. They should rather be forgiving, tolerant, understanding, ambassadors of peace and the bible details their rewards.
However, the bible also documents so many conflicts and wars. In many cases the wars were won because God himself was with his people else otherwise they would not win. He was involved in wars as he gave explicit instructions such as when he told Moses to keep his hands in the air so as to win the war. God even stopped the sun for Joshua to continue fighting. In other cases, he explicitly told Gideon the number of people he should take to war with. He empowered Samson to kill philistines. Many of Israel’s conflicts in the bible in which they won; the Israelites had sought God’s intervention before going to the war. Concisely, God allowed the other tribes, clans and people even his own (Israelites) to be killed for his glory. In some cases, his people (prophets, priests etc) killed in the name of God. A case in point the prophets of Baal who were killed by Elijah.
The overarching question is, why does God allow and participate in wars and help his peopl...