Signs point to other signs in an endless chain of signs. If you look up the word "rainbow" in the dictionary, you will not find a rainbow; you will find other words: color, light, rain, cloud, sun, etc. These words in turn point to other words. So postmodernism has pointed out that knowledge is impossible, since this stable dictionary definition that we turn to for meaning offers no stability at all. There is no such thing as a standard, official meaning of words. This whole notion builds on a foundation of absolutely nothing.
Because of this, it cannot be said that there is meaning in this life, that is, it cannot be said that anything that happens, that any relationship, that any pain or suffering, that any book, that any job, that any song, that any word, or what-have-you, has any meaning at all. Fahrenheit 451 does not mean that America is a consumer culture obsessed with unhealthy efficiency and in need of serious reform, because this meaning itself must have a meaning, and that meaning must have another meaning, etc. Just as looking up a word in the dictionary points to other words which point to other words, so Fahrenheit 451 points to the above meaning, but what does the above meaning point to? The above meaning points to another significance outside of itself, and that significance in turn points to another significance, and the chain goes on infinitely. There is no meaning to life because every event, every story, every thing, every word, every person, relationship, etc., only points to other things in this endless cycle and chain of signs.
Meaning is relational. When we say something is meaningful, we mean that something refers to something other than itself, that something is like something else. Fahrenheit 451 is only meaningful inasmuch as it is like a concept outside of the text, most relevantly in America. If this concept were not real and true, Fahrenheit 451 would have no meaning. So a meaning of a thing exists in its relation to another thing. And because postmodernism has observed that every thing points endlessly to other things, they have concluded that there is no stability, and thus meaning is pointless. Everything stands on nothing. Yet the massive presupposition they make is that there is only the cosmos, that the only sort of things which are in existence are these very dependent material things.
But if the Triune God exists, and as the Bible describes he is meaningful in himself and not dependent on other things for his meaning, then this endless chain of signs comes to a very solid, stable, standpoint when they directly or indirectly point to him. The Triune God is perfectly united in meaning. A loving Father means a Beloved Son. The two forever relate to one another in perfect union of the Holy Spirit of love. These three persons are in happy communion always referring to the other (John 17:24). The Father, in that he is the Father, forever implies the Son. The Son, in being the Son, forever implies the Father. And since the Son is a Beloved Son, he also implies a Spirit of love. Since the Father is a loving Father, he implies the Son and the Spirit of love. These three forever define one another in their relationship; together in perfect unity and oneness they define God as love.
Meaning is relational. If God is one in the sense that Allah is one he would be meaningless. But since he is one in the way that Yahweh is one (in the same way man and woman are one flesh), he is full of meaning and life; he is forever defined as love and unity.
Creation exists as a reflection of the Triune God. Creation is made by God the Father through his Word and his Spirit. God the Father designed Creation by his Word, his eternal Son. I take this to mean at least in part that the Word was the template or the model by which he designed every thing that exists; everything is an image of Christ: and that the history of this universe is the story of the Son. God's Spirit of love made the Creation so; he gives it life and dimension and reality.
So Creation first points to Christ in that it is made up of images of Christ; the abstract systems by which all things within Creation operate are outlined after the story of Christ. Input and output, supply and demand, all these things are in existence not randomly, but specifically because they are a picture of Christ and help us understand him and his story. The reason that nothing is able to escape these systems is because creation is designed to proclaim Christ.
Second, and not unrelated (in fact, the first demands the second), is that creation tells the story of Christ. The whole cosmos was setup and every event in history was ordained to display the cross of Christ; God spoke Creation and upheld it by his Word essentially to say at the cross, "This is what I am like; I am a God who gives." As Piper suggests, when speaking of the exhaustive sovereignty of God we must keep our eyes on the cross of Christ or else nothing will make sense. And Barth suggests that all of Christian thought is summed up in God saying, "I am gracious to you."
When we "worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator," human beings ceased to acknowledge the meaning of Creation. Without this presupposition, they began living in a world designed to point to the Triune God, but they disbelieved in this Triune God; they began living in a world of utter chaos and meaninglessness. When they had taken their eyes off of the Creator and turned to created things, they indeed ran into the postmodern problem: the utter meaninglessness of a world of signs.
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